Pretoria – More social media users will be brought to book for uttering racial slurs.
Civil rights organisation AfriForum said it would submit more than 100 affidavits to the SAPS for investigation.
AfriForum deputy chief executive Ernst Roets said the affidavits related to racism and incitement to violence being perpetuated on social media platforms.
The complaints were brought to the organisation’s attention through its website.
Roets said AfriForum was intent on ensuring people were brought to book as they were racialising issues that were unrelated, especially within political circles.
“Just last week a student leader made the statement ‘one bullet, one settler’ and that is the type of disruptive behaviour we are talking about.”
He said statements or comments made by users such as Thandiswa Mawisa, were much worse than those made by Penny Sparrow, but they did somehow not receive as much traction.
Mawisa was reported to the Lyttelton police station on May 10 by the group and a case number has finally been allocated. This after offensive comments were allegedly posted by the user on her Facebook page on May 2.
“We are not condoning Sparrow or saying that what she posted was not wrong."
"But there are double standards that prevail which result in people of other races not being held accountable for their utterances,” he said.
Roets emphasised that they were not focusing on posts on a race basis, but according to criteria they had which focused on what was a racist comment and what constituted incitement to commit crime.