South African Court Finds Online Postings To Be Hate Speech

In South African Human Rights Commission v. Khumalo, (S. Africa Equality Ct, Oct. 7, 2018), a South African Equality Court held that anti-White statements made on through Facebook and Twitter by Velaphi Khumalo, a youth sports officer, qualify as Hate Speech under Sec. 10 of the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act of 2000.  One of Khumalo's posts read in part: "I want to cleans this country of all white people. we must act as Hitler did to the Jews." The court summarized its holding:

[S]ection 10 must be understood as an instrument to advance social cohesion. The "othering" of whites or any other racial identity, is inconsistent with our Constitutional values. These utterances, in as much as they, with dramatic allusions to the holocaust, set out a rationale to repudiate whites as unworthy and that they ought deservedly to be hounded out, marginalised, repudiated, and subjected to violence in the eyes of a reasonable reader, could indeed, be construed to incite the causation of harm in the form of reactions by Blacks to endorse those attitudes, reactions by Whites to demoralisation and rachet up the invective by responding in like manner, and thus by such developments, on a large enough scale, derail the transformation of South African Society.

The court enjoined Khumalo from repeating his speech and ordered him to apologize to all South Africans, ordered him to pay costs, and referred the case to the public prosecutor for possible further action. Another action in a different court had already ordered the payment of damages. News24 reports on the decision.