Malema under fire for alleged hate speech
2010-03-10 16:00
ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema is facing a barrage of complaints to the police and chapter nine institutions over his latest racial outburst, after he led students in singing “kill the boer”.
Freedom Front Plus leader and Deputy Agriculture Minister Pieter Mulder will today lodge a hate speech complaint against Malema at the Brooklyn police station in Pretoria.
Mulder said the use of the slogan was a contravention of section 16 of the Constitution.
“Freedom of speech does not include the advocacy of hatred that is based on race, ethnicity, gender or religion, and which constitutes incitement to cause harm and has in any case been declared as hate speech by the courts.”
Malema, according to the Sowetan, led students at the University of Johannesburg in a song saying: “Shoot the boere [farmers], they are rapists”.
He told students that former president Nelson Mandela had convinced blacks to forgive, but they should never forget what was done to them.
AfriForum Youth national chairperson Ernst Roets said the organisation would submit a complaint to the Equality Court in Johannesburg.
Roets said it was not the first time Malema sang the song reminiscent of the late Peter Mokaba. He sang it at his birthday celebrations in Polokwane last week, in a province where six farmers were murdered in the past month, Roets said.
“Julius Malema has become the biggest embarrassment of not only the youth, but also of the country. There is no way in which you can dismiss the song as something that simply has to be viewed in a political context and that doesn’t have any real consequences,” he said.
The Afrikanerbond lodged a complaint with the SA Human Rights Commission (SAHRC).
“It is clear that neither the ANCYL or the ANC have the political will or power to rein in Mr Malema and his daily tirades against everything we hold dear in South Africa,” it said.
“We trust that the Human Rights Commission will act in a manner which will restore our faith in this institution as well as in the promotion of human rights.”
- SAPA