Malema's remarks were clearly intended to show white people were legitimate targets.
In the context of present-day South Africa, the saying that “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never harm me” rings hollow, because words of incitement can demonise a section of the population and make them easier targets for attack, or even “extermination”.
That ominous reality came across clearly yesterday in Judge Mark Sher’s judgment at the Western Cape Equality Court in Cape Town, when he found EFF leader Julius Malema guilty of hate speech.
He remarked that: “To enlist the support of a mob and incite it to commit acts of violence, victims of hate speech are routinely accused of all manner of repugnant behaviour by those who vilify them. One only needs to recall what Jews, Muslims and Tutsis were accused of doing, so that hatred and genocide could be fomented against them.”
He added: “To call someone a racist in South Africa is, given our racially oppressive past, inevitably to invoke detestation, enmity, ill-will and malevolence against such a person. While calling out someone who behaves as a racist may be acceptable, calling for them to be killed is not.
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“And calling for someone to be killed because they are a racist who has acted violently, is an act of vigilantism and an incitement of the most extreme form of harm possible.”
Malema’s remarks – at an EFF rally in Cape Town in 2022 – cannot be brushed off as a “cultural inheritance” from the days of the struggle, as has been argued – and accepted by courts – in the case of the Kill the Boer, kill the farmer song and slogan.
His remarks, directed at white people, with the injunction to his followers that they must be “prepared to kill”, were clearly intended to show white people were legitimate targets.
It’s not far down that road that you get to genocide.
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