Jewish board to charge BLF leader

Calls on Mngxitama to retract Holocaust Tweets

ANDILE Mngxitama is refusing to remove two anti-Semitic tweets – even as the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) prepares to take the Black First Land First leader to the Equality Court.

And yesterday Dr Iqbal Survé, chairperson of the South African Brics Business Council and executive chairman of Sekunjalo Investments and Independent Media, which owns The Independent on Saturday, entered the fray, calling on Mngxitama to “unconditionally retract”.

But the controversial Gupta ally said he would never remove the tweet, before adding to his anti-semitic rhetoric.

On Thursday, Mngxitama fired off two tweets. The first read: “For those claiming the legacy of the holocaust is ONLY negative, think about the lampshades and Jewish soap.”

A little later, he added in another Tweet: “I concure (sic) with @helenzille that the aroma of the burning flesh from the furnace of the holocaust may wet the appetite of the SA cannibals.”

Yesterday, Mngxitama, who has been accused of taking money from the Guptas and is known for intimidatory tactics against journalists, said:

”Do you know that the Germans before they burnt the Jews they came down to Africa in 1911 and rounded up people in Namibia, in their villages. And they burnt them. Did the Jews care?”

Wendy Kahn, the national director of the SAJBD, said lawyers were drawing up papers to take the matter to the Equity Court.

Mngxitama said: “I am upset that they are upset. In fact that tweet, if you white people check a little bit about the sufferings of black people, you would have seen it is part of rephrasing Helen Zille’s tweet. I want you to look at yourself.”

Deliberate

Mngxitama said his tweets were in reference to the controversial tweet by Western Cape Premier Helen Zille that not all aspects of the legacy of colonialism were negative.

“With this ugly, jeering remark, Mngxitama has portrayed not just the deliberate murder of Jewish people, but even the supposed reduction of their remains to everyday objects as something to be treated as a joke,” Kahn said.

“This has caused incredible pain within the community where only 70 years after the Holocaust it is confronted with these graphic and very unpleasant images,” she said. “We still have survivors in our community. The whole of the South African Jewish community in some way suffered from the Holocaust.”

Yesterday, Survé slammed the tweets.

“Earlier this week, Mngxitama tweeted that the legacy of the holocaust was not all negative.

“I ask that Mr Mngxitama unconditionally retract his statement. I am horrified and disappointed by his tweet, which is an affront to millions of Jewish people affected by the Holocaust.

“It is unacceptable to make such a statement – many Jewish people suffered during the Holocaust. They were victims of ethnic cleansing in Europe by fascist and racist Nazis.

“South Africa itself has been through a challenging history as a result of apartheid, which was modelled on Nazi doctrine,” Survé said

Survé added that he was concerned about populist statements with a strong ethnic and racial undertone.

He pointed to “inflammatory statements” made by EFF leader Julius Malema in KwaZulu-Natal about Indians, and a recent video of a group of white men assaulting a black family in full view of customers at a KFC in Gauteng.

In July, the high court in Joburg granted the South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) an interdict against BLF and Mngxitama after they manhandled journalists.