It’s hate speech and incitement, SAHRC tells Malema and EFF
Party says it won’t retract statements
The EFF has accused the SA Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) of quoting its leader Julius Malema out of context and trying to limit free speech for his call for people to “not be scared to kill for revolution.”
EFF spokesperson Sinawo Thambo was reacting to the SAHRC’s statement issued yesterday, in which it gave Malema and his party 10 days to retract his statements and those written on the party’s banners at its Western Cape people’s assembly last month.
Acting spokesperson Wisani Baloyi said they received complaints in relation to specific statements in reference to the Brackenfell High School incident and footage of a white person beating up one EFF member.
“Mr Malema questioned why that [white] person had not been located and taken to ‘an isolated space and attended to properly’, followed by an exhortation to the members that ‘You must never be scared to kill, a revolution demands that at some point there must be killing, because the killing is part of a revolutionary act’.”
Other statements flagged by the commission include where Malema says the party was at war with “white supremacists and that anything that stands in the way of a revolution must be eliminated”.
Complaints were also forwarded about posters stating that “Honeymoon is over for white people in South Africa” and “A revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate.”
Baloyi said some of the posters constituted incitement of violence and hate speech. He said Malema and the party had been served with a notice to apologise or face being taken to the Equality Court.
However, Thambo said they would not apologise until given an opportunity to present the party’s side of the story. “The EFF completely refutes the allegations … and categorises them as part of the nefarious attempts to erase the truth of our liberation history and an attempt to limit free speech.”
He said the commentary was taken out of context, and officials at the commission should have made an effort to research political literature which influenced Malema’s speech on the necessity of giving a violent response to violence. Thambo said Malema was reflecting on issues of anti-blackness as witnessed at Brackenfell where violence broke out between the EFF and parents in 2020.
“The experience of post-1994 has shown us that to confront violence with peace and reconciliation does not resolve injustice and that is the context within which the utterances were made and could never constitute incitement,”