ANCYL won’t say sorry for heckling

Disruptions at Kathrada memorial

THE ANC Youth League was not in a hurry yesterday to apologise for disruptions at last Sunday’s memorial service in honour of Struggle stalwart Ahmed Kathrada.

Rather than trying to meet the Active Citizens’ Movement ( ACM) deadline to apologise by 4pm today, or face being charged with contempt of court, the league said it would call for a meeting with them to “discuss challenges”.

ANCYL KwaZulu-Natal secretary Thanduxolo Sabelo said no apology would be issued until its own investigation into the heckling allegation was complete.

“Right now we are trying to determine if members of the ANC Youth League were involved in the heckling. It was not only people in yellow T-shirts.

“There were even people not wearing yellow T-shirts. We are not apologising for those people.”

Sabelo said he even believed members of the ACM, which organised the event, were involved.

ACM provincial executive member Ben Madokwe denied this, saying the movement’s people had been well behaved.

“We’ve heard that the ANC Youth League said it did not instruct its members to heckle but that doesn’t matter, they must apologise.”

The apologies should go out in all the media and should be to the ACM, the Kathrada family and the public, all of whom were embarrassed by the heckling, he said.

Before the memorial, the Durban High Court gave the league permission to attend the Sunday event after the ACM had sought an interdict against allowing them in, fearing for the safety of former finance minister Pravin Gordhan, who was a speaker.

Permission was granted after the league had promised that its leaders would behave and not assault, intimidate, harass or attempt to remove any of the speakers.

On another issue, Sabelo said he had apologised to the national office of the league for using the words of the banned hate-speech song “Shoot the Boer; Shoot the Farmer” at their Durban march to counter the anti- Zuma protest last week.

He denied singing the song, saying he had only used the words in a slogan, and that it had been “in error”.

“We are so used to using the slogan that includes those words,” he said, adding that they were “not meant to create violence”.

Mienke Mari Steytler, spokeswoman for the Institute for Race Relations, said hate speech of any kind was completely unacceptable and should be reported to the SA Human Rights Commission.