THE Freedom Front+ has unwisely opened festering wounds - and gone even further by adding salt. In a country that is still battling inequality, racism and all forms of prejudice, it is irresponsible for any leader to distort history and sow fear. Pieter Mulder, the FF+ leader who is also the deputy minister of agriculture, must know that his ill-considered comments about land ownership will go down as the most foolhardy moment of his political career.

I cannot believe that the same party that complained about the inflammatory language of the ANC Youth League would itself be an agent of division and disunity.

Mulder's argument, that some land was not stolen from "bantus", deserves a strong rebuttal. He quotes research and documentation, including Voortrekker diaries, to argue that Africans never owned or occupied land in what is now the Western Cape and Northern Cape.

Is Mulder implying that the experiences of landless blacks must be validated by the testimony of the Voortrekkers? How benevolent! Afrikaner historiography emphasised the hardships endured by the Voortrekkers.

Leaders Louis Trichardt, Hendrik Potgieter, Sarel Cilliers et al must have persuaded their followers, who were generally dissatisfied under British rule, that unless they acquired land, they would perish. I doubt very much that, in documenting their trek, they would have been charitable to those they usurped.

President Jacob Zuma is correct to point out that land is a sensitive issue "and to the majority of people in this country, it is a matter of life and death". And the truth of this is borne out by the trek itself.

Mulder is quick to quote figures that support him, and argues that there isn't a "completed land audit against which we could correlate these facts". Look around you Mr Mulder: there are landless blacks everywhere!

Citing Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini and recently empowered people like Cyril Ramaphosa and Tokyo Sexwale as examples of equitable land ownership is the height of hypocrisy. Figures are helpful, yes, but we do not need statistics to show us that the face of poverty and landlessness is still black!

We should all, black and white, be committed to ridding our country of this inequality, not by dishing out welfare, but by being innovative and entrepreneurial. Distorting history takes us a million miles from that goal.

The ANC government has been found wanting in many respects, but it cannot be accused of advocating a violent land-grab policy similar to the one which has decimated Zimbabwe. The government knows that the willing-buyer-willing-seller method has not worked and yet, at no point has there been a firm policy declaration that land would be expropriated without compensation. The constitution doesn't even allow it.

And Mulder's colleague, Petrus Groenewald, is wrong to use the unsavoury Julius Malema as an example of government's stance on the matter. To challenge the president by questioning whether "it is responsible leadership if some leaders in the ANC constantly tell white people that they have stolen the land ..." is disingenuous.

The FF+ must not be allowed to spark fear by telling white South Africans the ruling party regards them as thieves who must be driven out! That is a lie!

Malema and his pronouncements have become a convenient excuse for people who want to tarnish South Africa: to justify their racism, they use him as a reflection of what the ANC and the government stands for.

Who would have thought that Malema would be a role model for the FF+, and his inflammatory rhetoric a template of how Mulder addresses inequality?