Former Black First Land First (BLF) spokesperson Lindsay Maasdorp has apologised for utterances he made after the Hoërskool Driehoek tragedy which claimed the lives of four pupils in 2019.
His apology comes six months after the equality court ordered him and former BLF deputy secretary-general Zwelakhe Dubasi to apologise for comments they made on social media about white children who died when a bridge collapsed at the Vanderbijlpark school. Dubasi apologised earlier.
The court action was instituted by Solidarity and the victims’ families. They had argued the pair had made comments celebrating the children’s deaths that had propagated racial hatred.
In its judgment in March, the equality court found the comments made by Maasdorp and Dubasi amounted to hate speech and ordered, as part of the remedy, that both apologise and that their apologies be communicated to the public by the SA Human Rights Commission (SAHRC).
The SAHRC on Wednesday shared Maasdorp’s letter dated September 3.
In that letter, Maasdorp said he wished to apologise to all South Africans and acknowledged that his comments were hate speech and they were wrong to publish and post.
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