‘I may be crass but not a racist’
Kohler Barnard takes on DA’s ‘saintly crusader’ in court
● DA MP Dianne Kohler Barnard is fighting racism and sexism allegations against her, telling a court she is entitled to freedom of expression even if some people found her comments to be “unpalatable and crass”.
In court papers filed in the Cape Town equality court, Kohler Barnard said her accuser grossly misrepresented what transpired at a party workshop.
In response to allegations of racism, sexism and discrimination against her by the DA’s former director of parliamentary operations, Louw Nel, she said: “Nel’s allegations did not constitute discrimination in terms of the promotion of equality and prevention of unfair discrimination act (Pepuda).
“This is so because Pepuda clearly defines what constitutes ‘discrimination’. The mere fact that someone may find remarks unpalatable or even crass does not mean they constitute discrimination. Nel’s case fails to appreciate this,” she argues.
Nel has told the equality court that Kohler Barnard told an internal DA workshop on crime trends last year that farm murders had decreased since the removal of Robert Mugabe from power because Zimbabweans had returned home.
She is alleged to have said that local women were stupid for entering into relations with Nigerian men who scammed them.
She also allegedly said black children targeted whites on the N2 highway in KwaZuluNatal by throwing stones at them.
In her court papers, Kohler Barnard did not deny making the three statements. Instead, she accused Nel of omitting relevant contextual information, and “misquoting actual utterances”.
“His omissions were aimed at buttressing his endeavour to portray me as a bigoted battering ram while simultaneously painting himself as a saintly pro-human rights crusader,” she said her affidavit.
This is not the first time Kohler Barnard has faced allegations of racism. Her DA membership was terminated in 2015 after she shared a Facebook post praising apartheid president PW Botha. Her expulsion was overturned on condition she was not found guilty of a similar offence.
The latest claims against her could lead to her being expelled again.
Kohler Barnard argued in her papers that her comments were based on facts and research, did not amount to discrimination and that Nel had contrived the accusations.
She said Nel’s version had no basis in law in terms of the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act.
“In other words, even if his account of events is accepted [which it is not], none of the utterances allegedly made constitute ‘unfair discrimination’.
“In any case, in the [unlikely] event that this court finds discrimination to have been established, I submit that it was fair discrimination, so in the end, Nel’s case must ultimately be dismissed.”
Kohler Barnard argued that the input she gave at the workshop was based on information she had gathered from rural communities in Limpopo during visits in which farm crimes had been discussed.
She said during these meetings, farmers told her and two other MPs that most of those arrested for farm crimes were illegal immigrants, mostly from Zimbabwe.
“There had been a noteworthy decline in farm murders in the preceding two months; they surmised that this could be attributed to [the] coup in Zimbabwe.
“What I relayed was not a naked expression of bigotry not based on any facts, as Nel misguidedly charges. My comments were also not an expression of our personal views as MPs; I was simply relaying information gathered at a work-related trip, within the context of a discussion about crime trends,” said Kohler Barnard.
She said that other public officials, including even senior police officers, had said that a high number of criminal offences in the country had been committed by illegal foreign nationals, including Zimbabweans.
“Public officials like ourselves cannot shirk the responsibility to make certain observations about crime simply because we fear that we might offend people like Nel. Similarly, where members of the public tell us, as public officials, of their views on crime, we cannot keep quiet.”
Kohler Barnard denied the allegation that she had said women were stupid for falling for Nigerian con men.
She stood by her assertion that blacks had been targeting whites on the N2.
She said her assertion that white people were killed by black children needed context. “In virtually every incident I know of, the youngsters convicted for these rockthrowing acts were black.”