Malema found guilty of hate speech

The Equality Court has found Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader Julius Malema guilty of hate speech for statements made at a rally in 2022.

As a result, the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC), which took Malema to court, will be taking action against him.

The comments stem from an incident that took place outside of Brackenfell High School in 2020, where EFF supporters clashed with residents after allegations emerged that the school’s matric dance was a whites-only event, something the school has denied.

During a rally held in the Western Cape two years later, Malema brought up the incident, making statements that were the subject of the matter against him.

“Tell that white man to try me. I’ll come many times here in the Western Cape, appearing in a court case, because no white man is going to beat me up, and I call myself a revolutionary the following day,” Malema told supporters at the rally.

“You must never be scared to kill. A revolution demands that at some point there must be killing because the killing is part of a revolutionary act,” he added.

Judge Mark Sher, therefore, found that Malema’s statements constituted hate speech “as they demonstrated a clear intention to incite harm and to promote or propagate hatred.”

He added that when this call emanates from South Africa’s then third, now fourth, largest party, “it has the potential to foment racial violence on a large scale.”

“Whilst calling out someone who behaves as a racist may be acceptable, calling for them to be killed is not.”

The EFF said in a statement that it has instructed its lawyers to challenge the hearing at the Supreme Court of Appeal.

“This judgment is a grave distortion of history, philosophy, and the nature of political speech in a democratic society,” it said.

“This conclusion is fundamentally flawed and deliberately misreads both the context and the meaning of the speech.

The EFF argues that the court interpreted Malema’s statements “as a literal instruction to kill white people.” 

The party says this interpretation strips the speech of its “political, historical, and ideological context, reducing a revolutionary critique to criminality.”

“It assumes that the reasonable listener is incapable of understanding metaphor, revolutionary rhetoric, or the history of liberation struggles.”

“We note the court ruling as an attack on the democratic space and the right to articulate revolutionary politics,” the party added.

A busy month for the SAHRC and hate speech

At the beginning of August, Patriotic Alliance leader Gayton McKenzie took to social media to announce that he would sue the Open Chats Podcast for remarks made about the Coloured community.

In an episode that aired on 21 July 2025, Methula and Kama referred to the Coloured community as “mentally crazy” and that “Coloured siblings chow (have sex with) each other.”

The outrage saw the SAHRC receive several complaints from political parties, many of whom had complained about the Open Chats Podcast earlier in the month.

Despite the podcast hosts apologising, the SAHRC’s chairperson, Chris Nissen, rejected this, saying the organisation would be launching an investigation into the comments.

Following the outrage, South Africans on social media soon pointed to McKenzie’s use of the k-slur on social media several years ago.

This led to another string of complaints against the Sports, Arts, and Culture Minister for the exact offence he had accused the Open Chats Podcast hosts of.

McKenzie defended his posts, saying that he “could never be guilty of racism” but was guilty of posting “insensitive, stupid, and hurtful things a decade or two ago.”

The SAHRC said that it had found that the PA leader’s posts were a “prima facie violation of the Equality Act” as the use of the k-word slur is “unutterable” in South Africa.

As a result, the commission has sent an allegation letter to McKenzie. After receiving a response, it says it would determine the best way forward, which may “include instituting procedures in the Equality Court.”

In response to the letter, McKenzie said that the SAHRC’s statements amount to “defamation, because they said these things before giving me a hearing, and without completing even a cursory investigation of any kind.”

He added that he believes there has been a “weaponisation of the SAHRC” and “looks forward to embarrassing” them if it ends up in court.