‘The term coolie isn’t hate speech’
The EFF member has been ordered by the court to apologise to the Indian community for his comment
Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) member Khehla Mngwengwe says he will apologise to the Indian community for using the derogatory term “kuli” (coolie) in a Facebook post after the July 2021 civil unrest in Kwazulu-natal and parts of Gauteng.
Mngwengwe, who broke his silence this week regarding the recent Umlazi equality court ruling that ordered him to apologise for the racially offensive remark he made on the controversial Karou Charou Facebook page, said he had merely been responding to a barrage of racial comments.
This comes after Narend Ganesh, leader of the National Independent Congress of South Africa, won a hate speech case against Mngwengwe earlier this month.
Ganesh took the matter to the equality court in Durban two years ago, from where it was later transferred to the Umlazi equality court.
The court ordered that Mngwengewe apologise within 30 days, after Ganesh told the court he did not want a fine or prison sentence imposed in a bid to be “reconciliatory”.
Ganesh and Mngwengwe represented themselves in court.
The Facebook page of controversial social media content creator Karou Charou was later banned by Meta for its allegedly racist content.
Ganesh told the court that Mngwengwe had written: “Wait until the army disappears and we will never forget nor forgive. We will make sure we triple by hundreds of what you did to innocent black people. You must know that you kulis will never rest.”
Mngwengwe made the remarks after the July unrest when 36 people, 33 of them black, were killed during alleged incidents of vigilantism in Phoenix. The South African Human Rights Commission later found that the killings were racially motivated, which included black people being profiled and targeted at roadblocks in the suburb.
Brothers Dylan and Ned Govender were sentenced to seven years imprisonment in August last year for grievous bodily harm, common assault and attempted murder in the Palmview area of Phoenix.
In December last year, Yubandra Govender and 10 others were acquitted for their alleged actions in July 2021 violence.
Ganesh argued in court that Mngwengwe’s remarks were hate speech and an incitement to violence because people could have seen the post and acted on it. He said he did not want the “extreme punishment” of a prison sentence or a fine meted out but that a “constitutionally wrong” remark needed to be corrected.
Mngwengwe, however, argued in court papers that he had made the remarks in the context of an already racially inflammatory conversation on the Karou Charou Facebook page.
“Many of my black brothers and sisters were provoked by the shocking and racist content and plethora of fan comments on the Karou Charou Live show at the time of the July unrest. This is where I commented and not on my own page or any other platform,” Mngwengwe said.
“This proves my comment was not isolated or meant to incite harm but was in direct response to the hurtful
and racist insults on a live video. The context places the applicant’s misleading claims in a totally different light,” he said.
He alleged that on the Karou Charou page, black people had been referred to as k ****** .
“We know that k ***** is indeed hate speech. The applicant and Mr Karou Charou both appeal to Indians who speak like this and many have reacted. The well-known word ‘coolie” is not hate speech as it means ‘Indian worker’,” he said.
Mngwengwe then cited the titles of two books, a movie and a play that use the word “coolie” — Coolie Woman, the Odyssey of Indenture (2013) by Gaiutra Bahadur, Coolie (1983), which stars Bollywood actor
Amithab Bachan, and the play Coolie Odyssey (2002) by South African playwright Rajesh Gopie.
“There are no books, movies or plays or thesis that have the term k ***** in titles, however, while clearly the term k ****** is hate speech coolie is not,” he argued.
He said he believed Ganesh was using the incident for political mileage.
Mngwenge told the Mail & Guardian this week that despite the court’s hate speech ruling against his use of the word and an order to apologise, it had not found that he was a racist and he intended to open a case of defamation of character against Ganesh.
“The comment was made in the aftermath that was happening in July 2021. Karou Charou took a screenshot of my comment and pasted it on my Facebook account. He made it look like I just woke up and wrote what I wrote, so people who viewed it thought it’s about the unrest,” he said.
Mngwengwe said he would comply with the court order and publish an apology for the remark.
Ganesh welcomed the court ruling, saying he had not intended to punish Mngwengwe but to take a stand and to prevent any loss of life that might have arisen if anyone had acted on his comment.
“My initial reaction would have been to punish him, take him to the cleaners, but the object of my charge was not retribution, revenge or punitive. It was merely to enforce a conviction or precedent so that others can learn that, no matter what emotions, no matter what the angst and anxiety and stress and tension that prevailed in terms of a racial aspect, do not act on it because words have meaning and they can hurt,” he said.
He said the trial had stretched his resources in terms of finances, time and personal risk but he believed it was important that “a caution be sent to every citizen that South Africa is a country of people and not races”.
“We need social cohesion now more than ever before and we must not allow the dark history of the July 2021 unrest to foreshadow the great need to become patriots and true citizens of this country in a common brotherhood,” he said.
‘Karou Charou took a screenshot of my comment and pasted it on my Facebook account. He made it look like I just wrote it’