‘Let’s speak Swahili’
The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) used Heritage Day as an opportunity to campaign for some of its favourite causes yesterday.
Foremost was the land issue, with the party releasing a statement expressing its desire to “reiterate our call for the return of the land through the amendment of our constitution to allow expropriation without compensation”.
The party also brought up other issues, such as its longterm goal of having Die Stem removed from the South African national anthem and its more recent goal of getting South Africans to embrace Kiswahili as a shared African language.
In a video clip shared recently and taken from an EFF media briefing last month, leader Julius Malema can be seen calling for the continent of Africa to develop a shared language.
The Citizen reported last week Malema now feels vindicated by government’s recent decision to offer Kiswahili in the school curriculum.
Malema had earlier suggested Kiswahili would be a good choice.
The language is best known providing the title catch phrase to the Hakuna Matata song from The Lion King.
It is already widely spoken throughout the continent and will be available in the South African school curriculum from 2020 as an optional subject.
While his embracing Kiswahili is fairly recent, Malema’s goal to have Die Stem removed from South Africa’s anthem has been publicly known for some time.
Last year, Malema said it had been the song that those oppressing black people had sung while ruling South Africa under apartheid.
Particularly, the Afrikaans community has been vocal in saying it would not like to see this part of the anthem dropped, which follows the singing of Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika.
In the interview, Malema spoke passionately against Die Stem being part of the national anthem and the fact that the lyrics were in Afrikaans.
“They [the ANC] want us to sing using the language of the oppressor. They want us to sing the song they were singing in Vlakplaas when they were torturing and killing our people,” said Malema.