(1)There are no compelling evidence that even during the armed struggled these songs led to attacks on farmers. We can speculate as to why, but even when aimed at liberation activists and armed members, it did not lead to farm attacks. So here the historical context doesn't seem to be particularly helpful for your argument and loses the wood for the trees. Would ordinary South Africans in a post-Apartheid dispensation be more susceptible? Again we can only speculate...
(2) There is not good enough data on farms, rural areas and farm murders. This and many others discourses would greatly benefit from better data. Your own data and sources have been rightly criticized. There is a lot of speculation and a lot of fitting the data to the narrative on all sides. (If we say look at income, would we conclude there is a black genocide in South Africa based on class as a metric / the WC government allowing coloured / black South Africans to die on the Cape Flats - again all of it silly, yet farm attacks seem to be not much different reasoning with race and murder rate seemingly being used as the argument). Farming - again the data here is problematic (The Conversation had a good article on this recently) - is still overwhelmingly white. There is no evidence, despite the horrific levels of violence / torture in some of these attacks (part of some explanation / but not strong enough on its own), that it is driven by racial hatred or more specifically inspired by the song. (For instance isolation and potential law-enforcement / public response is legitimate explanation. I would for instance like to see statistics on all rural violent crime and specifically where it is not in close proximity to communities / people living close to one another)
(3) The latest court ruling can be argued and we will have to see the outcome of the Afriforum appeal. Mistakes were arguably made by Afriforum and potentially the judge (ruling that in all context the song is not hate speech). But the point is, we have legislation and a legal process to test competing claims and arguments about the song and what it implies in a specific context. Again, this is the test for the courts under the specific legislation - your argument should focus on this aspect if it wants to criticise the specific case. The liberal thing, is surely to let this play out and then respond accordingly?
Finally, it is striking how many of the arguments made against the song (including in this piece), can be made on even better grounds against the Apartheid Flag. Yet many that want the song banned, don't think the flag should be banned. Yet, our highest court, has not banned the flag, but prescribed when its use would not constitute hate speech.
Two things follow from this, how inconsistent our classic liberal / reactionary right (best way to describe PW and IRR these days) have become and how they are really no different from the left. PW and the IRR, used to be much more measured, but today seem to be prone to all the same identity politics, ideological bias and culture war politics (our local version). That actually, things are still pretty liberal in South Africa after all...I don't think the song is healthy or should be encouraged, but I do think our political system is handling it the best it can, according to the constitution and on pretty liberal grounds - whilst the political actors and space seem to do there thing as well...All very liberal - right?
The only reason why liberal media attacked Musk is because they're looking for any reason to do so after he favoured conservatives with Twitter. They don't give a damn about South Africa.
Here are the problems with this argument:
(1)There are no compelling evidence that even during the armed struggled these songs led to attacks on farmers. We can speculate as to why, but even when aimed at liberation activists and armed members, it did not lead to farm attacks. So here the historical context doesn't seem to be particularly helpful for your argument and loses the wood for the trees. Would ordinary South Africans in a post-Apartheid dispensation be more susceptible? Again we can only speculate...
(2) There is not good enough data on farms, rural areas and farm murders. This and many others discourses would greatly benefit from better data. Your own data and sources have been rightly criticized. There is a lot of speculation and a lot of fitting the data to the narrative on all sides. (If we say look at income, would we conclude there is a black genocide in South Africa based on class as a metric / the WC government allowing coloured / black South Africans to die on the Cape Flats - again all of it silly, yet farm attacks seem to be not much different reasoning with race and murder rate seemingly being used as the argument). Farming - again the data here is problematic (The Conversation had a good article on this recently) - is still overwhelmingly white. There is no evidence, despite the horrific levels of violence / torture in some of these attacks (part of some explanation / but not strong enough on its own), that it is driven by racial hatred or more specifically inspired by the song. (For instance isolation and potential law-enforcement / public response is legitimate explanation. I would for instance like to see statistics on all rural violent crime and specifically where it is not in close proximity to communities / people living close to one another)
(3) The latest court ruling can be argued and we will have to see the outcome of the Afriforum appeal. Mistakes were arguably made by Afriforum and potentially the judge (ruling that in all context the song is not hate speech). But the point is, we have legislation and a legal process to test competing claims and arguments about the song and what it implies in a specific context. Again, this is the test for the courts under the specific legislation - your argument should focus on this aspect if it wants to criticise the specific case. The liberal thing, is surely to let this play out and then respond accordingly?
Finally, it is striking how many of the arguments made against the song (including in this piece), can be made on even better grounds against the Apartheid Flag. Yet many that want the song banned, don't think the flag should be banned. Yet, our highest court, has not banned the flag, but prescribed when its use would not constitute hate speech.
Two things follow from this, how inconsistent our classic liberal / reactionary right (best way to describe PW and IRR these days) have become and how they are really no different from the left. PW and the IRR, used to be much more measured, but today seem to be prone to all the same identity politics, ideological bias and culture war politics (our local version). That actually, things are still pretty liberal in South Africa after all...I don't think the song is healthy or should be encouraged, but I do think our political system is handling it the best it can, according to the constitution and on pretty liberal grounds - whilst the political actors and space seem to do there thing as well...All very liberal - right?
The only reason why liberal media attacked Musk is because they're looking for any reason to do so after he favoured conservatives with Twitter. They don't give a damn about South Africa.