South Africa’s firebrand MP found guilty of hate speech

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 on Wednesday 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 member of parliament – 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: “While 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 notes that 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 a metaphor, revolutionary rhetoric or the history of liberation struggles,” the EFF states.

In June, Malema, whose party came fourth in last year’s parliamentary election, was denied entry to the United Kingdom (UK).

The Home Office said he had been deemed “non-conducive to the public good”.

In a letter released by the EFF at the time, the Home Office cited his vocal support for Hamas, including a speech he made after the 7 October 2023 attack on Israel in which Malema said his party would arm the group if it came to power.

The Home Office said Malema had also made “statements calling for the slaughter of white people [in South Africa] or hinted that it could be an acceptable option in the future”.

The EFF condemned the UK’s decision as “cowardice” and said it would stifle democratic debate.

Malema was also criticised by United States president Donald Trump in a confrontational meeting with South African president Cyril Ramaphosa in May.

Trump played a video of the EFF leader singing an anti-apartheid song which refers to white farmers.
Malema often chants the song – which includes the lyrics “kill the Boer (Afrikaner); kill the farmer” – at his political rallies.

Afrikaner lobby groups have tried to get the song banned, but South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal has ruled that a “reasonably well-informed person” would understand that when “protest songs are sung, even by politicians, the words are not meant to be understood literally, nor is the gesture of shooting to be understood as a call to arms or violence”.

White-minority rule ended in South Africa in 1994, with anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela’s rise to power.

– BBC

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