Cape Town - The ANC on Thursday said it has filed court applications against Democratic Alliance MP Dianne Kohler Barnard, DA councillor Chris Roberts and former member of the party Penny Sparrow demanding they be fined up to half a million rand for hate speech.
The ruling party quoted its secretary general Gwede Mantashe as saying it had taken this step because it has “a moral and legal duty to demonstrate leadership and the responsibility to prevent racial conflict and warfare”.
“The applications are being brought primarily to restore the dignity of the African, Coloured and Indian majority and to defend our Constitution,” ANC spokesman Zizi Kodwa said.
Read: DA, ANC file complaints against MPs
Kodwa said the ANC filed an application with the Western Cape High Court this week asking that the court declare that a Facebook post shared by Kohler Barnard last year was racist and constituted hate speech and unfair discrimination as defined in the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act.
In the founding affidavit Mantashe said the call, in the Facebook post, for the return of PW Botha constituted a call for a return to oppression, repression, detention, torture, maiming and killing of countless African, Indian and Coloured people. “In fact, it is a call for the return of the hated system of apartheid itself.”
Kodwa said the ANC was also asking the court to declare that Kohler Barnard, who successfully appealed her expulsion from the DA, was denying supporters of the ANC and all Africans, Coloureds and Indians their right to dignity and order her to pay R500,000 to an organisation that promotes racial tolerance.
It was also asking prosecuting authorities to institute criminal charges against her. The ANC has also lodged an application in the Port Elizabeth High Court seeking the same relief against DA councillor Chris Roberts in the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality, for calling fellow councillor Mongameli Bobani a “bobbejaan” (baboon) during debate in council in July last year.
Kodwa said thirdly, on Thursday morning the party lodged an application with the Scottburgh Magistrate's Court in KwaZulu-Natal asking for Penny Sparrow to be fined R200 000 for hate speech for calling Black people “monkeys” and prosecuted criminally.
Since Monday, the ANC has issued several statements branding the DA as racist and accusing the party of being complicit in the erection of a billboard in central Cape Town stating “Zuma Must Fall”.
Kodwa declared: “The uninformed call that President Zuma must fall is a ploy to divert a real conversation on racism that finds expression in the comments of a minority belonging to a particular party that is intent on achieving the impossible return to a racist past.”
ANC chief whip Stone Sizani followed up with a sally about racists within the DA and lodged a complaint against Kohler Barnard with Parliament's ethics committee. DA chief whip John Steenhuisen described it as retaliation for the official opposition party laying a complaint with the same committee against ANC MP Bongani Mgonke for calling in a Facebook post at the weekend for the Overbeek apartment building on which the billboard was erected to be burnt down. Steenhuisen described the ANC's accusations of racism against his party as childish electioneering ahead of this year's local government poll.
African News Agency