The Human Rights Commission (HRC) has announced it is taking the PAC to court for chanting “one settler, one bullet” and the use of a poster with the display of the phrase during protests outside Brackenfell High School last week.
Commissioner André Gaum on Tuesday said the incident was one of three alleged instances of hate speech reported to the commission.
Twelve complaints were laid against EFF supporters for allegedly singing “shoot the farmer/Boer” outside Brackenfell High on November 6 during a protest over alleged racism at the school.
“This slogan has been determined to be hate speech by the commission and the equality court in the past,” read a report compiled by the commission.
The last incident involved two complaints about comments allegedly made by EFF MP Nazier Paulsen when he referred to coloured people who supported Brackenfell High as the “brown pets” of “white racists”.
The commission cited several comments allegedly made by Paulsen, including:
- “I coined the term ‘brownface’ especially for you, my little monkey face”;
- “Nothing beats taking the piss out of white people’s brown pets”; and
- “Most kullids are f****d up in the head.”
The commission said there was prima facie evidence to suggest that in the PAC’s case the party endorsed the slogan “one settler, one bullet”.
Gaum said: “In this case you clearly have a political party that distributed this, it emanated from them, there was even a poster on a pole, and so it’s very clear there’s no possibility even of standing away and saying sorry, but we weren’t really involved in this, we can’t help it if some of our supporters do X, Y and Z.”
Commissioner Chris Nissen was also present during the EFF protest that turned violent on November 20 when police clashed with protesters.
He said on Tuesday that the police acted with “great restraint” in the face of armed protesters who pelted them with rocks.
“It’s important to understand that the conditions for the march were clearly spelt out and one of those conditions was that there should be 100 people and not more, and the police negotiated with the political leaders of the EFF to increase it to 500 and in that they agreed that they will obey that,” he said.
“However, when the march started moving, and we were right at the front of that march, they did not go to the school but to the intersection where the road leads to the school.
“When the march started, the 500-person cut-off was swollen by others coming to the march and the police then stopped them from marching any further.”
Nissen said EFF supporters in the crowd started throwing stones. “What I saw and many of my colleagues saw were people with axes, golf clubs, stones, sticks and so on. On a number of occasions the stones were rained onto the police and onto other people on the other side,” he said.
“The police did use teargas and stun grenades and water cannons, but I must say the police really acted with great restraint.”
He said police management also intervened and stopped officers from using rubber bullets against the protesters on the few occasions when they started doing so.
But Nissen said the police should have used the “spirit of the law” as opposed to the letter of the law, because allowing the entire crowd to march to the school “in a very peaceful way” would probably not have resulted in the clashes seen on Friday.
He also pleaded with political parties to stay away from schools and allow children to complete what had already been a trying academic year.
“We’re making an appeal to all political parties who want to go and demonstrate either for or against the school, please stay away from the schools, let our children write with the dignity they deserve,” said Nissen.
“There were other political parties who called out people to come and defend the school and the community. In my opinion that was the wrong thing to do because the law enforcement agencies are there to protect the community, including on that particular day to protect the school and that community.”
The commission is also investigating the allegations of racism at Brackenfell High that sparked the protest action by the EFF and the PAC. EFF supporters were attacked outside the school when they went to protest two weeks ago, resulting in last week’s show of force by the party.
The commission said it had asked to meet the Western Cape education department and would be seeing school stakeholders, including Grade 12 pupils, after their matric exams.
“We really want to do a thorough job. Some of the stakeholders in those engagements are the matriculants themselves. They are writing exams at the moment, and we just need to give them space to do that,” said Nissen.
We’ve told them before about the integration of just putting learners together without a programme of sensitisation and diversity.
“Our investigation is also with the view of assisting the school with coming to terms with these kinds of issues. They may have a diversity programme, but we have offered that we do the diversity training management and the transformation management at that school, because it’s one thing to say there’s no racism – we live in a racist society,” said Nissen.
He said they wanted to help the education department to facilitate diversity programmes at schools to prevent similar incidents in future.
“We’ve told them before about the integration of just putting learners together without a programme of sensitisation and diversity. It’s not just at that school – as a commission we’ve also done training for other schools in other parts of the country,” said Nissen.
“So it’s very important that the education department at that level also look at how to pull things together when you have different languages, different cultures, different religions, into one space.”
The school faces allegations that a private matric farewell party reportedly organised by parents was attended only by white pupils though the school is almost 40% black.
This event followed allegations of racism levelled anonymously against teachers, pupils and parents on a social media group created at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement in May.
The commission is also investigating allegations that EFF leader Julius Malema made threatening comments against police officers.
EFF secretary-general Marshall Dlamini made similar overt threats in Brackenfell on Friday in a racially charged speech riddled with threats of violence against “white racists” and community members.
“What is important to understand is that the responsibility to build nonracialism also lies with political leaders and political parties,” said Nissen.
“And what we’ve seen is political leaders and political parties always at times playing the race card during elections over the years, and we need to tell the political parties and leaders, please act responsibly.
“The responsibility also lies with government, and it also lies with political parties and their leaders to send out the right messages and not the wrong messages.”
