AfriForum fights Mandela Foundation’s call to ban old SA flag

AFRIFORUM says it will approach the Equality Court to have the SA Communist Party’s flag banned if the Nelson Mandela Foundation’s application to the court to ban the old apartheid-era South African flag is successful.

The foundation made an application to the Equality Court for an order to declare that displays of the apartheid-era flag constituted hate speech and compounded the pain that millions of black South Africans suffered under apartheid, and continue to suffer through its legacy.

Ernst Roets, AfriForum’s deputy chief executive, said: “The same logic could be used to argue that the SACP should be banned, or that its flag is hate speech.”

He said this was because 100 million people had been killed in the world as a result of communism, and that this was much more than the people who died under apartheid rule.

Roets said they were in favour of freedom of speech, but a predetermination for something to be hate speech should contain a call to commit harm. Roets said they did not support the flag, nor did they use it or have any loyalty towards it.

He said he was not disputing the foundation’s view that the flag compounded the pain experienced by millions of black South Africans. “We are concerned that people argue that they have pain, or they argue that their dignity has been violated, even when they don’t necessarily feel as such. But they use that as a weapon to further a political agenda.

“I’m not saying that this is the case here. I am not a black South African, I don’t have any loyalty towards that flag, but I can imagine how a black South African would look at that flag, and I’m sure that they would be very angry or have negative feeling towards it.

“But that’s not sufficient to make a claim of hate speech, because there’s no call to action. I would agree that it is hate speech if someone were to wave that flag and say we must go out and hurt black people, or something along those lines. Then it becomes hate speech,” Roets said.

Sello Hatang, the foundation’s chief executive, said that with the matter now before court, they preferred to wait for AfriForum to respond to the court, and the foundation would then respond accordingly.

In a statement, the foundation said the decision to launch this application came after years of watching public displays of the old flag and hoping that such behaviour would stop.

“Displays of the old flag at demonstrations against farm murders on Black Monday, October 30 last year, at least two of which were verified, persuaded us that the time had come to act,” the foundation said.

Neeshan Balton, the executive director of the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, said they did not have a view on the matter yet as their board meeting scheduled for tomorrow would deliberate on the issue.

Lorraine Tlomatsana, the head of the law clinic at the Freedom of Expression Institute, said they fully supported the foundation’s view of the display of the flag being hate speech. “We know there are challenges with the definition of hate speech, and everyone has got freedom of expression. However, it shouldn’t incite imminent violence, it shouldn’t propagate war and it shouldn’t be harmful,” Tlomatsana said.

She said anyone displaying the old apartheid-era flag would be falling within the ambits of hate speech.

It’s not hate speech if there’s no call to action