Zuma ‘hate speech’ investigation begins

SA HUMAN Rights Commission spokesman Isaac Mangena has confirmed it is investigating complaints of hate speech against President Jacob Zuma.

The Freedom Front Plus laid a complaint of hate speech last month, after Zuma reportedly told some of the country’s wealthiest people at an ANC fundraiser that “all the trouble began” in 1652 when Jan van Riebeeck landed in the Cape.

The commission had since received two more complaints, but it was not immediately clear who had laid them.

ANCspokesman Keith Khoza said: “We believe that the president, whatever remarks he made, would be vindicated.”

FF+ spokesman Anton Alberts said the remarks “could in addition be historically disputed and it could justifiably be asked whether this is the official view of the ANC”.

Alberts previously said the party felt compelled to lay the complaint because it felt the remarks constituted a form of hate speech.

“He spoke on a racial basis. He referred to whites and wherever whites engaged with black people, they engaged in aggressive acts and warfare and displacement of black people.

“He (Zuma) also said that the ANC was a formation of indigenous people… which implies other people can’t be regarded as indigenous.”

Alberts pointed to the preamble of the constitution, which states South Africa belongs to all those who live in it. As such, Zuma’s words conveyed the impression that whites, coloureds and Indians were “non-indigenous”, creating “a dispensation where they are regarded as second-rate citizens, as colonists”. – Sapa