MAMPARA OF THE WEEK

Pieter Groenewald

Oom Piet barks up the wrong tree

Pieter Groenewald, leader of the Freedom Front Plus; remember them? The volkstaat guys. Since that bus is moving nowhere slowly, they have taken to barking up other wrong trees. Groenewald wrote to the organisers of the World Choir Games, billed as the world cup of choral music, to object to the singing of the struggle song, Thina Sizwe, which alludes to the dispossession of land from blacks by whites, because it could contribute to racial polarisation on the issue of land. The organisers told Oom Pieter to jump into the nearest lake, reminding him the song had existed for a long time and the Bill of Rights guaranteed artistic freedom. The apartheid state used to censor songs it didn’t like. Groenewald and Co can exercise that backward censorship the day they get to the volkstaat.