By: ANG Reporter
Patriotic Alliance (PA) Deputy President was on Thursday (18 May 2023) granted leave to appeal the judgment that found him guilty of hate speech after calling EFF leader Julius Malema a cockroach.
The high court in Johannesburg found Kunene, who is also the City of Joburg member of mayoral committee (MMC) for Roads and Transport guilty of hate speech when he referred to Malema as “a cockroach” and “a little frog” in November 2021. The court ordered him to issue an unconditional public apology to Malema, which must include a retraction of the statement itself.
Judge Motsamai Makume said at the time that the statement uttered by Kunene when he referred to Malema as “a cockroach”, “little frog” and “criminal” “are hereby declared to constitute hate speech” as defined by the Equality Act. However Kunene refused to apologise to Malema, indicating that he had instructed his lawyers to appeal the ruling, which he felt was wrong.
The spat between Kunene and Malema started after the EFF leader said he was “conflicted” about working with “amapantiti” (bandits), amid coalition negotiations between the PA and other political parties after the local government elections in 2021.
“I’m going to deal with this little frog. Julius is just an irritating cockroach that I must now deal with publicly,” Kunene said during a television interview. Kunene’s Advocate Greta Engelbrecht SC had argued that although these terms had been used by Kunene they were not and could not be classified as hate speech.
Kunene and the PA immediately filed their appeals against the decision of the court and judge Makume stated in his judgment granting Kunene leave to appeal that he is satisfied that there are reasonable prospects of the appeal succeeding in a higher court. Judge Makume further stated that the issues raised were res nova (issues never decided by a Court before) and a different court could take a different view on the matter.
Kunene will file his papers before the full bench in the Johannesburg High Court.
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