THE Johannesburg High Court has ruled that the comments made by Deputy President of the Patriotic Alliance (PA) Kenny Kunene to EFF leader Julius Malema referring to him as a ‘cockroach’ were hateful and dehumanising.
The high court found that there was no justification for these comments and that Kunene sought to incite hate and harm towards Malema.
The high court also ordered Kunene to apologise and retract the ‘cockroach’ slur to the EFF leader.
On Wednesday, the EFF said it welcomed the decision of the high court, adding that Kunene’s comments were not only hateful, but were not considerate of the historical impact of derogatory used to refer to human beings, in inciting violence and genocide.
“Genocides and hate crimes against fellow human beings begin at the point of dehumanisation,” the party said in a statement.
“The EFF hopes that this judgement will serve the rehabilitating purpose that the prison system has clearly failed to achieve with Kunene as an individual. The comments made by Kunene clearly reveal the inadequacies of our Correctional Services system in rehabilitating individuals who are prone to criminality.”
The matter relates to an interview televised on the 18th of November 2021, where Kunene referred to Malema as a “frog” and a “cockroach” that he would supposedly deal with.
On Wednesday, Kunene said he would be appealing the judgement.
“I respect the courts in South Africa but I have strong grounds to feel the judgement handed down yesterday by Honorable Makume J was wrong in law and will be overturned on appeal. My lawyers will be advising the high court as soon as possible that we will indeed, respectfully, appeal,” Kunene said in a statement.
“They will be pointing out that the judgement failed to not only consider the various arguments raised by my counsel in the matter, which in their opinion resulted in the incorrect outcome, but the judgement itself is at odds with the established case law.”
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