South African opposition politician Julius Malema has been convicted of hate speech by the country’s equality court, following remarks he made at a rally in 2022. Malema, leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party, often sparks controversy in a nation where, 31 years after apartheid ended, racial tensions still linger.
After an incident where a white man allegedly assaulted an EFF member, Malema said: “No white man is going to beat me up… you must never be scared to kill. A revolution demands that at some point there must be killing.”
The equality court ruled that these remarks “demonstrated an intent to incite harm”, but the EFF said they were taken out of context.
Two complaints had been made against the 44-year-old MP – one by South Africa’s Human Rights Commission and another by a person who alleged they had been threatened because of the politician’s remarks.
In its ruling, the court said: “Whilst calling out someone who behaves as a racist may be acceptable, calling for them to be killed is not. And calling for someone to be killed because they are a racist who has acted violently, is an act of vigilantism and an incitement of the most extreme form of harm possible.”
In a subsequent statement, the EFF said the ruling “is fundamentally flawed and deliberately misreads both the context and the meaning of the speech”.
“It assumes that the reasonable listener is incapable of understanding metaphor, revolutionary rhetoric or the history of liberation struggles,” the EFF added.
In June, Malema, whose party came fourth in last year’s parliamentary election, was denied entry to the UK.
Credit: bbc.com
