BLF slogan constitutes hate speech, court rules
Registration issues may have serious consequences for electoral representation, claims FF+
JUST a day before the elections, Black First Land First (BLF) has been dealt a serious blow after the Equality Court found it guilty of hate speech.
The court found the party’s slogan “Land or Death” to be hate speech.
The matter was brought to the court by Lucy Strydom, who was represented by the South African Human Rights Commission.
In its ruling, the court ordered that the BLF tender a written apology to all South Africans within a month.
The apology is expected to be published on the website of the SA Human Rights Commission.
The BLF was also ordered to remove their political slogan “Land or Death” from their regalia, social media accounts and website within a month.
The clerk of the Equality Court was directed to send a copy of the judgment to the director of Public Prosecutions for possible institution of criminal proceedings against the BLF and its leaders.
But a defiant BLF dismissed the court ruling, saying it would not apologise. “We will instead appeal the ruling. This ruling is nonsensical and shows the backwardness of the magistrates’ courts,” BLF deputy president Zanele Lwana said.
She said the Constitutional Court had ruled on what hate speech was.
“The magistrate erred in finding our slogan hate speech. Strangely enough, the court found ‘one settler one bullet’ to be historical, and therefore not hate speech,” Lwana said.
She said the court ruling was an overall victory for BLF because the application had failed to stop BLF from being deregistered with the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) and prevented from participating in tomorrow’s elections.
Meanwhile, the Freedom Front Plus (FF+) yesterday said it was not giving up on its fight to have BLF deregistered as a political party with the IEC.
The Electoral Court found last week that the IEC had erred when it did not publish the party’s registration in the Government Gazette in 2016.
It ordered chief electoral officer Sy Mamabolo to publish the decision to register BLF as a party in order to allow objections.
Yesterday, FF+ leader Pieter Groenewald said his party was still of the opinion that BLF’s registration was unlawful.
“Its participation in the general elections is also unlawful,” Groenewald said at a press conference in Parliament. He charged that the BLF had contravened the Electoral Act by allowing membership of the party based only on race.
“The FF+ has made a decision that the moment the registration is gazetted, as ordered by the Electoral Court, we will appeal the application.
“We will ask for deregistration because there is no doubt that the constitution of BLF contravenes Section 16 of Electoral Act. That section prohibits any political party that wants to participate in elections and restricts membership based on race.”
Groenewald also said his party had found that four other parties had not had their registration published in a Government Gazette – as required by law.
“That will have huge consequences for elections. The Electoral Act provides that if a political party does not further exist, there has to be recalculation of formulae (for allocation of seats),” he said.