Hate speech activist must apologise

FAIR CIVIL LAW SOCIETY TO OPEN AN OFFICE IN CAPE TOWN: From left. MARY ANN KOK WHO IS TO RUN THE CAPE TOWN AND SNOWY SMITH PICTURE: JIM McLAGAN 11.4.2003

FAIR CIVIL LAW SOCIETY TO OPEN AN OFFICE IN CAPE TOWN: From left. MARY ANN KOK WHO IS TO RUN THE CAPE TOWN AND SNOWY SMITH PICTURE: JIM McLAGAN 11.4.2003

Published Dec 16, 2015

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The Durban equality court has ordered Snowy Smith to apologise “like he means it” to the Jewish community within the next 10 days.

The South African Jewish Board of Deputies laid the complaint against Smith, accusing him of packaging ”extraordinarily offensive”, racist anti-Jewish propaganda, which he was sending out to an extensive mailing list of people.

The board had attached dozens of pages of e-mails it said Smith had sent to several people, including a Cape journalist, a teacher at a Jewish school and Judge Mervyn King.

It said Smith had been sending out the e-mails since at least 2010.

Mary Kluk, the board’s national chairwoman, testified that the e-mails were hurtful and, if left unchecked, could lead to violent acts against Jewish people.

Smith, who runs an organisation called Fair Civil Law, which offers legal advice, denied being anti-Semitic - or a Holocaust denialist - and claimed the information he sent out was well-researched and the truth.

He said he was only distributing what was already on the internet and YouTube, most of it posted by “the Jews”, and that he had sent e-mails only to “his friends and those on his mailing lists”, and questioned how they had ended up in the hands of “the Jews”.

Smith, who represented himself, said he was relying on the defences of free speech, fair comment and the truth.

In her written judgment handed down yesterday, magistrate Aletta Moolman said the e-mails “impinge on the dignity of the Jewish people and constitute hate speech” against people of the Jewish faith.

She said Smith had referred to Jewish people as “the enemy, dictators, murderers, war criminals, terrorists, torturers, rapists, thieves, dictators and dishonest people”.

She directed Smith to make an “unconditional written apology” and, quoting from case law, said it should be “an unreserved withdrawal of all imputations and also contain an expression of regret that they were ever made”.

She ordered that the apology be delivered to the clerk of the court who would deliver it to the Jewish Board.

Moolman said the e-mails could be construed as demonstrating a clear intention to incite harm and propagate hatred against the Jewish people, and that the defences raised by Smith held no merit.

“The values of human dignity, freedom and equality are placed far above any freedom of expression. An individual’s freedom of expression cannot, in the court’s view, prevail against such hate speech.”

She also confirmed an interdict she granted last month that interdicted Smith from sending out any e-mails referring to people of Jewish faith.

Yesterday the board’s attorney, Susan Abro, said Smith had not been present when the judgment had been handed down and could be held in contempt if he did not apologise.

But Smith had told the court during an earlier hearing that he would appeal against the judgment.

The Mercury

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