Court to decide on Julius Malema’s hate speech case against Kenny Kunene
The fate of Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader Julius Malema’s hate speech case against Kenny Kunene is now in the hands of the court.
Malema took Kunene, the deputy chair of the Patriotic Alliance, to the Equality Court after Kunene appeared on eNCA during the local government elections last year and called Malema a “cockroach”.
Judge Motsamai Makume, sitting in the Johannesburg High Court, heard arguments on the matter on Tuesday and judgment was reserved.
Malema has asked the court to declare Kunene’s comments hate speech.
But Kunene’s lawyers said that while the comments may be deplorable, they don’t meet the requirements for hate speech under the Equality Act.
In their arguments before the court, Malema’s lawyers describe the term “cockroach”, “as a dog whistle for the extermination of the Tutsi people” during the Rwandan genocide.
They said in a political setting it can’t be divorced from that context and that it’s “an epithet used to dehumanise” and intended “to degrade human life to being equivalent to vermin”.
They also home in on Kunene’s comments in the interview that he would “deal with” Malema, saying this demonstrated an intention to harm him.
Kunene’s lawyers, meanwhile, argue while it may be a deplorable term and evoke the Rwandan genocide, that in the South African context, it does not engage a prohibited ground under the Equality Act.
They also insist the comments didn’t call for harm against Malema, saying Kunene explained he was going to “deal with” his political rival by exposing information to the public.
-EWN
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