ANCYL not rushing to apologise for heckling
The ANC Youth Lea g ue (ANCYL) was not in a hurry yesterday t o apolo gise by today’s deadline for disrupt i ons at str uggle stalwar t Ahmed Kathrada’s memorial service in Durban on Sunday.
Rather t han t r yi ng to meet t he Active Citiz ens’ Movement (ACM) demand to do so by 4pm today, or face being charged with contempt of court, the ANCYL said it would call for a meeting with them to “discuss challenges”.
ANCYL provincial secretary Thanduxolo Sabelo also said no apolo g y would be issued until its own investigation into the heckling alleg- ation was completed.
“Right now we are trying to deter mine if members of the ANCYL were involved in the heckling. It was not only people in yellow T-shirts,” he said. “There were even people not wearing yellow T-shirts. We are not apologising for those people.”
Sabelo said he believed members of the ACM, which org anised t he event, were involved.
ACM provincial executive member Ben Madokwe denied this, saying the movement’s people had all been well behaved. “We’ve heard that the ANCYL said it did not instruct its members to heckle but that doesn’t matter, they must apologise.”
The apologies should go out in all the media and should be to the ACM, the Kathrada family and the public, all of whom were embarrassed by the heckling, he said.
Before the memorial, the Durban High Court gave the youth l e a g ue per mission to attend the Sunday event after the ACM had sought an interdict against allowing the league to attend, fearing for the safety of for mer finance minister Pravin Gordhan, who was a speaker.
Per mission was g ranted after the l eague had promised its leaders would behave and not assault, intimidate, harass or attempt to remove any of the speakers.
On another issue, Sabelo said he had apologised to the national of fice of the youth league for using the words of the banned hate-speech song “Shoot the boer, shoot the far mer” at its Durban march to counter the anti-Zuma protest last week.
He denied singing the song, but only using the words in a slogan, and said it had been “in error”.
This month t here have been at least two attacks on f ar mers i n KwaZulu- Natal, one fatal.
Sabelo said he had not heard of the one at Table Mountain, near Pieter maritzburg, which happened after the march.
“There is no way it could have been i ncited by me. Obviously we do not condone any for m of attack. The song is not literal,” he said, adding that the youth league would be investigating a case of a far mer near Newcastle all e gedly chasing workers and their cattle of f his far m.
Mienke Mari St e yt l e r, spokesperson for the Institute of Race Relations, said hate speech of any kind was completely unacceptable.
“Songs of t his nature should not be tolerated.”
She added that witnesses should report such incidents to the SA Human Rights Commission.