The South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) on Friday praised the decision by the Equality Court‚ sitting in the high court in Johannesburg‚ which ruled that utterances made by a sports officer employed by the Gauteng provincial department were hate speech.
On January 4 2016‚ Velaphi Khumalo posted two inflammatory social media statements which the commission deemed to be amounting to hate in terms of the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act.
In his comments‚ he said that white people needed to be killed “as Hitler did to the Jews”.
The court on Friday also interdicted Khumalo from repeating the comments – and ordered him to‚ if he had not already done so‚ remove all references to the utterances from any social media or other forms of public communication.
The court also ordered that Khumalo publish a written apology to all South African citizens acknowledging that the comments were hate speech‚ that he was wrong to say them and that he undertook to never utter any remarks
The commission said it welcomed the Equality Court’s decision.
“This matter‚ and many others referred to the Commission‚ is a clear indication that South African society at large‚ no longer tolerates utterances that widens schisms based on race‚” the commission said in a statement.
