Explained: The ‘satirical’ white genocide tweet that caused all the trouble

By Richard Poplak

3 Aug 2023

Recently, I tweeted (X’ed?) a piece of satire that has upset a number of people. It requires context.

What wine pairs best with white genocide?

— Richard Poplak (@Poplak) August 2, 2023

Since the beginning of my career, my mandate has been to provide “fact-checked satire” on the South African condition, the vast majority of which has focused on the ANC (and deservedly so).

The country the ANC has governed for 30 years is traumatised and deeply violent. The statistics are there for all to see: the murder rates in big cities like Johannesburg (where I live) and Cape Town, mimic a war zone.

As for the victims of this orgy of blood, again the statistics are widely available: those who bear the brunt of the violence are largely poor and black.

That said, violence in SA is so widespread that it becomes arbitrary. Like all of us, I fear for my family’s safety.

The ANC and their ancillaries own this problem. In some cases — xenophobic attacks on black foreign nationals, political battles within the organisation, “protests” for services they should provide — ANC members either actively or tacitly promote the violence.

In KwaZulu-Natal, the assassination campaign against members of the shack dwellers’ association Abahlali baseMjondolo has resulted in over 20 deaths. Based on the available evidence, almost all of those could be classified as political murders.

But there is no evidence — zero, nada, bupkes — for an ethnic cleansing campaign in South Africa targeting the white minority.

Such accusations are libellous and obscene and deserve to be treated with contempt.

Hence the tweet.

There is, of course, a cynical conflation at work here: to deny “white genocide” is to deny or minimise the brutal violence experienced on the country’s farms.

Long before this narrative took shape, I would go on assignment in rural SA and think: this is not good.

Lonely plots surrounded by oceans of poverty. Ancient patterns of hatred and resentment. A total absence of rule of law — worse, a corrupt, uninterested and under-resourced police service.

This was and remains a recipe for social discontent and violence. And it’s tragic.

Reams of academic research have been written about farm murders; millions of words of journalism have contributed to our understanding of this phenomenon. The violence in flyover country is gothic and, no doubt, often retributive. It is totally, totally unacceptable and should have been addressed long ago by the only people who could do something about it: the damn government.

But they address nothing.

They haven’t addressed violence in townships. They haven’t addressed violence in “secure” housing estates. They haven’t addressed violence on the N3. They haven’t addressed domestic violence, violence targeting the LGBTQ community or xenophobic violence.

We’re all in this together

In other words, we are all in this together. No one is exempt. Everyone is vulnerable. The statistics, again widely available, suggest some are more vulnerable than others: the poor in urban and peri-urban areas.

Which is all to say, there is no campaign of white genocide. That’s a conspiracy theory, one that clicks in very neatly with narratives of white victimhood elsewhere in the world.

This discourse has re-emerged from a predictable source: the Economic Freedom Fighters, and their 10th anniversary hoedown. The party’s leader, Julius Malema is a flip-flopping shyster, funded in part by white gangsters, who has reignited the white genocide narrative in order to cause a media shitstorm. Well done to him. He’s played everyone he hoped to play.

The EFF leadership are after two things: money and power (which are actually the same thing). The party has no interest in governing, but intends to act as kingmaker as we slip into the coalition era. Their aim: slurp the fat from state and municipal contracts, while running protection rackets on the ground. This approach depends on an absence of the rule of law and a prevalence of chaos. People always get hurt in such a process, and having reported on the EFF for its 10-year existence, the injured parties are very rarely white.

Singing “Kill the Boer” while wearing Gucci loafers is just cosplay by a racketeer masquerading as a politician.

He gets to do this because he has nothing to lose and everything to gain.

His actions deserve to be tested in court — the Democratic Alliance and others have already initiated suits to this effect — and they will be. If nothing else, this country has a functioning (but not perfect) judicial system.

And look, I understand why many white South Africans feel vulnerable. I AM one. Contrary to the belief of Twitter trolls, white saffas can’t magically go “back” to Europe, or go live with Tucker Carlson on his ranch in Buttfuck, Maine.

Home is home.

This is why promoting the “white genocide” narrative, and why conflating it with ghastly farm murders, is so unconscionable. It is dragging the dead into a propaganda project — one that, like all propaganda, has the potential to lead to the exact opposite of its intended outcome.

The only thing that will save South Africa is solidarity — across class, across race, across geography.

The sooner we begin that process, the better. DM

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We’re all in this together