‘Please don’t send a bunch of k ***** s’
Momberg racist rant against 10111 operators heard
● Days before Vicki Momberg was sentenced to prison for a racist rant, Department of Justice employees were complaining that two white staff in Pretoria had described a black colleague as a baboon and a monkey.
Department employees Natascha Steynberg Roos and Lourens Botes have been suspended in connection with the alleged comments.
In one social media post, Roos wrote: “That baboon dink dit is sy company [thinks it is his company] ek haat hierdie mense [I hate these people] . . . he must voetsek already!”
A recording of Momberg’s call to 10111 after she was the victim of a smash and grab reveals that she said she was “going to smash into someone”.
“I don’t care where I go. Quite frankly, I hope whichever car I smash into that I kill every single k **** r in [it].”
Racist rage of Vicki Momberg revealed
● “Quite frankly, I hope whichever car I smash into that I kill every single k **** r that is in that f ***** g car.”
This is one of the shocking comments made to a 10111 police call centre operator that contributed to the conviction of Vicki Momberg following her racist meltdown after being the victim of a smash-and-grab incident in North Riding, Johannesburg, in February 2016.
A video of her rant at police officers on the scene went viral, but the recording of Momberg’s four phone calls to 10111 reveals the extent of her abusive comments.
Although the calls were played once in court, no transcript was added to the court papers and the recording was never released, until now.
Three of the four crimen injuria charges Momberg, 49, was found guilty of related to her call to 10111. The fourth was in connection with her tirade against police officers trying to assist her at the scene.
On Wednesday, Momberg, who had pleaded not guilty to all charges, was sentenced to three years in prison, with one year suspended, by the Randburg Magistrate’s Court.
Her final 10111 call contains the worst of the abuse. “Is this a white person speaking?” a panicky Momberg can be heard asking.
The operator, who remains calm and professional throughout the ordeal, responds in the negative, and asks how he can assist.
“I’ve got a problem, I have been smashand-grabbed at 14th Avenue. I am so nervous to drive anywhere I am just driving in circles. I am going to cause a major accident.
“At the moment I am . . . I am . . . I am going to smash someone, because there is nothing I can do. I don’t care where I go. I am missing the cars by a fraction. And quite frankly, I hope whichever car I smash into that I kill every single k **** r that is in that f ***** g car.”
She also refers to a petrol station as a “k **** r station” when asked if she is near a well-known service station on Malibongwe Drive. “I don’t know, I don’t know,” she says. “I am just driving because if I drive into the k **** r station . . . petrol station . . . it’s just f ***** g k ***** s everywhere and I can’t trust a single one of them.”
The operator then confirms that a unit would be sent to assist her.
“Please don’t send a bunch of k ***** s, because I do not want to deal with a f ***** g k **** r. So send me white people or Indian people, but don’t send me a k **** r,” Momberg ranted.
She is the first person to be jailed for crimen injuria in South Africa. During sentencing‚ magistrate Pravina Raghoonandan said the jail term was an “inevitable” outcome.
“Some may think the sentence is harsh [but] it must send out a clear message for people who use the K-word. The crime of crimen injuria is generally not considered a serious offence; it depends how a particular person’s dignity has been impaired.”
Momberg is being held at Johannesburg’s Medium B prison, where she will be able to receive her first visitor today.
On Wednesday, Momberg will apply for leave to appeal against the sentence.
Historically, crimen injuria carries a sentence of a fine, community service and a suspended sentence.
A source close to the case said the 10111 recording had been released in the hope that those who felt the sentence was unfair could learn “the truth about this case”.
While Momberg’s sentence was largely welcomed, it was labelled as “proof of double standards” regarding race in the country by some, including AfriForum.
Momberg’s lawyer, Kingdom Onah, said on Friday that he and his client were prepared to use every court at their disposal to fight the sentence. “This is a charge of crimen injuria . . . we were looking forward to receiving a noncustodial sentence. Hence we are appealing. We are definitely not happy with the sentence. We are prepared to take the matter all the way.”
Onah said if leave to appeal was granted, Momberg would apply for bail in the same proceedings. “But if leave is denied, we will take our application to the high court . . . Vicki Momberg was the victim of a crime, and that is what prompted all this. If the person is a victim of a crime, circumstances can lead to a different reaction.”
Vicki Momberg got what was coming to her and we have no sympathy for her. She has not apologised to David Mkhondo‚ the policeman she racially abused. Nor has she apologised to South Africans for peeling off the scab on the slow-healing wounds of racism and white superiority. Potential moments for self-reflection or redemption came and went without even a half-hearted gesture of apology. She has shown so little remorse she is even seeking to appeal the Equality Court’s ruling that she pay Mkhondo R100 000, make an unconditional written apology, and undergo sensitivity training.
She is a relic of a more spiteful time in our history. More dishearteningly, she is also a poison-tipped arrow pointing us back to a past that is receding but not yet dead.
Most South Africans have deplored her racist rant and have endorsed the maximum sentence — three years in prison‚ one of which was suspended for three years on condition that she is not convicted of the same offence — imposed by magistrate Pravina Raghoonandan for crimen injuria. It is reportedly the first time a person has been sent to jail in South Africa for crimen injuria, an injury to a person’s dignity, usually by means of obscene or racially abusive language.
In Momberg’s case, it was no common or garden variety of the crime. She used the K-word 48 times on a police officer who tried to help her after a smash-and-grab in 2016. She also refused to talk to a 10111 phone operator because she was black. By anyone’s standards this is extreme and hateful behaviour.
At the same time, some commentators have raised questions about freedom of expression and the wisdom or otherwise of driving racists underground, where their prejudice can fester unchallenged and unlanced.
Freedom of expression is the bread and butter of newspapers, and we will not easily relinquish the ground we have gained since the constitution enshrined the right for all citizens. It is a right that, by implication, extends to the right to make mistakes and to be wrong.
As Justice Edwin Cameron said in The Citizen v
Robert McBride: “An important rationale for the defence of protected or ‘fair’ comment is to ensure that divergent views are aired in public and subjected to scrutiny and debate. Through open contest, these views may be challenged in argument. By contrast, if views we consider wrong-headed and unacceptable are repressed, they may never be exposed as unpersuasive. Untrammelled debate enhances truth-finding and enables us to scrutinise political argument and deliberate social values.”
The “fair” in fair comment has an elastic quality that embraces “extreme, unjust, unbalanced, exaggerated and prejudiced” comment, according to the judgment.
What it does not embrace is hate-filled invective designed to hurt.
We also recognise that freedom of expression is valuable precisely because it facilitates a deepening of democracy through the free flow of ideas. It enhances our ability to reach the best solutions to the many problems our society faces. Momberg’s rant has no value to add to any conversation. It would in fact tend to torpedo the efforts of braver and better people to build a just and prosperous South Africa.
Predictably, AfriForum greeted the news of Momberg’s sentencing by raising questions about double standards. Others have raised questions of equivalence with comments by Julius Malema about slitting the throat of whiteness. His comments are ugly, and crudely expressed, and we do not endorse them. But excusing one culprit by pointing fingers at another does nothing to elevate the tone of public debate. In any case, Malema’s words have the virtue, if one can call it that, of referring to the condition of white superiority. Momberg’s comments, no matter which way you slice them, deliver no such ambiguity.
It would be a shame if we gave her and her toxic views the power to derail efforts to build a South Africa united in diversity, as envisioned by the founders of our democracy.
What [fair comment] does not embrace is hate-filled invective