Malema blasts Equality Court ruling as ‘grave distortion’

EFF PRESIDENT Julius Malema has vehemently rejected Wednesday's Equality Court ruling that found his statements constituted hate speech and incitement to violence, labelling the judgment a “grave distortion of history, philosophy, and the nature of political speech in a democratic society”.

- MASHUDU SADIKE

The ruling by the Western Cape Division of the Equality Court upheld claims by the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) and Dante van Wyk against Malema and the EFF.

The SAHRC initiated the litigation in November 2022 following public complaints about comments Malema made at a political gathering in Cape Town in October 2022. The court found that the statements constituted an exhortation to kill white males.

“You must never be scared to kill. A revolution demands that, at some point, there must be killing. This is a war between white supremacy and black consciousness, you must know the two will never meet,’ and “Racism is violence and violence can only be ended by violence,” Malema said at the time.

The court found these statements could “reasonably be construed as demonstrating a clear intention to incite harm” and violated Section 10 of the Equality Act.

Malema, however, argued that the court's conclusion is “fundamentally flawed and deliberately misreads both the context and the meaning of the speech”.