The Equality Court found Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema guilty of hate speech on Wednesday for remarks made at a 2022 political rally.
Judge Mark Sher ruled Malema “demonstrated a clear intention to incite harm and to promote or propagate hatred” in violation of the Equality Act.
The case followed complaints by the South African Human Rights Commission and Dante van Wyk, who received thousands of threatening messages after Malema’s speech.
At the EFF’s October 2022 rally in Cape Town, Malema told supporters: “Tell that white man to try me. I’ll come many times here in the Western Cape, appearing in a court case, because no white man is going to beat me up and I call myself a revolutionary the following day.”
He continued: “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.”
The remarks referenced a violent confrontation between EFF members and residents at Brackenfell High School in November 2020.
Judge Sher said calling for someone to be killed constituted “an act of vigilantism and an incitement of the most extreme form of harm possible.”
“It is not acceptable in our society, which, in terms of the noble aims set out in the Equality Act, is trying to heal from a racially oppressive and violent past and to encourage and foster reconciliation, social cohesion and goodwill amongst all races,” Sher said.
The court found Malema’s statements amounted to “an exhortation to kill white males” who participated in the Brackenfell incident and anyone engaging in racist behaviour toward EFF members.
Both Malema and the EFF were held jointly liable as the party “endorsed and supported these statements in the media advisory which it issued and in these proceedings.”
Van Wyk testified he went into hiding in the Northern Cape after being “inundated with thousands of aggressive and threatening messages from EFF supporters on social media.”
The Human Rights Commission had called on Malema to provide a written public retraction and apology, which he refused.
The EFF announced it would appeal to the Supreme Court of Appeal, calling the ruling “an attack on the democratic space and the right to articulate revolutionary politics.”
“The court has stripped Malema’s speech of its political, historical and ideological context and assumed that the reasonable listener is incapable of understanding metaphor and rhetoric,” the party said in a statement.
Democratic Alliance leader John Steenhuisen welcomed the verdict as “a victory for the rule of law, for the Constitution, and for all South Africans who cherish the values of a free, fair, and non-racial society.”
“His hate speech was most recently aired live from the White House in a meeting between President Donald Trump, President Cyril Ramaphosa and a South African delegation,” Steenhuisen said.
The DA indicated it would explore further legal action against Malema following the “groundbreaking judgment.”
“Part of the reason we joined the Government of National Unity was to keep destructive and hateful political parties like the EFF out of our nation’s government,” Steenhuisen added.
The case stems from tensions at Brackenfell High School where EFF protesters clashed with parents and security in 2020 over allegations of racial exclusion at a school event.
At a second protest, violence erupted with police intervening. Van Wyk was later acquitted of assault charges related to the incident.
During his two-hour 2022 speech, Malema criticized EFF members for not retaliating against those who attacked them at Brackenfell.
The court heard the EFF subscribes to “Marxist-Leninist and Fanonian schools of thought” and its manifesto calls for capturing power “through whatever revolutionary means necessary.”
Judge Sher noted that when such calls come from the leader of South Africa’s third-largest political party, they have “the potential to foment racial violence on a large scale.”
Both parties were ordered to pay legal costs, including fees for expert witnesses and two counsel.
This is not Malema’s first hate speech case. In 2011, he was found guilty for singing “Shoot the Boer” and prohibited from singing liberation songs containing those words.
