Julius Malema took Kenny Kunene, the deputy chair of the Patriotic Alliance, to the Equality Court after Kunene appeared on eNCA during the local government elections last year and called Malema a ‘cockroach’.
The fate of Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader Julius Malema’s hate speech case against Kenny Kunene is now in the hands of the court.
Malema took Kunene, the deputy chair of the Patriotic Alliance, to the Equality Court after Kunene appeared on eNCA during the local government elections last year and called Malema a “cockroach”.
Judge Motsamai Makume, sitting in the Johannesburg High Court, heard arguments on the matter on Tuesday and judgment was reserved.
In their arguments before the court, Malema’s lawyers describe the term “cockroach”, “as a dog whistle for the extermination of the Tutsi people” during the Rwandan genocide.
They said in a political setting it can’t be divorced from that context and that it’s “an epithet used to dehumanise” and intended “to degrade human life to being equivalent to vermin”.
They also home in on Kunene’s comments in the interview that he would “deal with” Malema, saying this demonstrated an intention to harm him.
For more Information visit: EWN
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