Durban - R1 million. This is the amount the Hindu Association of South Africa and SA Hindu Dharma Sabha (SAHDS) are suing Durban’s Revival Ministries for over allegations of hate speech against the Hindu religion.
In a letter of intent to sue for damages, which the Daily News has seen, the organisations are suing the ministries’ Rev Llewellyn Joseph, along with his church, for R1m. Attorney Shaminder Rampersad alleged in the letter, dated June 17, that Joseph made denigrating statements against the Hindu religion.
“On or about February 3, 2020, the Revival Ministries, represented by Reverend Llewellyn Joseph and Dr Allen Joseph acting in concert, distributed a video on Facebook wherein your Reverend Llewellyn Joseph makes the following statements: “The fear, that curse or those spirits are working in and through your home, and every time when it comes along that Kavadi time, the previous time, you just feel the heaviness come upon your family and your home,” the letter reads in part.
Rampersad says the video received widespread negative media coverage and backlash from the public, hence the decision to take the matter to the Equality Court, SA Human Rights Commission and high court to sue for damages.
“We are instructed to annex hereto, marked Annexure A, an extract of an academic textbook on Hindus namely, ‘Inside Indian Indenture’ by Professor Ashwin Desai and Professor Goolam Vahed (Unisa Press 2010), which speaks for itself. We are instructed, inter alia, to discover this as evidence against you and your organisation that highlights your hate speech herein,” he said.
Rampersad’s legal submissions contained in the letter are that: “Hate speech is defined in our Constitution of the Republic of South Africa Act 108 of 1996 as follows: “Advocacy of
hatred that is based on race, ethnicity, gender or religion, and that constitutes incitement to cause harm”.
“It is clear that the aforesaid utterances by your Rev Llewellyn Joseph amount to hate speech. Our client has requested that we point out to you that aforegoing conduct has the propensity to escalate to protesting, riots or inter-religious/ethnic discord that may reveal the same to be a threat to public safety.
“In the interim, our client firmly instructs us to pursue and obtain the necessary relief/damages against you and your organisation notwithstanding you providing us with an undertaking in writing that you shall refrain from the aforesaid conduct. We wish to politely point out that we are instructed to obtain the following relief in the Equality Court/Human Rights Commission: that you and your organisation be interdicted and restrained from insulting, harassing, propagating hate, degrading the Hindu community and from publishing, propagating, advocating or communicating hate speech as defined in section 10 of the Equality Act in any form whatsoever on any public/social media forum”.
The organisations further demanded that the church pay damages of R1m, into the Oliver and Adelaide Tambo Foundation or to a Hindu religious public benefit organisation of their choice, for the promotion of non-racialism, tolerance, reconciliation and social-economic upliftment in South Africa.
Revival Ministries’ lawyer Siven Samuels said people propagating that the sermons were hate speech were looking to censor the Bible. “There was an open-air Christian service in which Chetty was called up to give his testimony which was that Jesus is the way. The scripture says so. The Bible encourages people of Christian faith to share the scripture with people of other religious beliefs as Jesus did in his time.
“Everyone, whether that person is Hindu, Christian, Jew, Muslim or any other faith, has the right to practice their religion freely and publicly,” he said.
Samuels said a statement had to advocate hatred and incite to cause harm for it to be termed hate speech.
“If both element are not present simultaneously, then it doesn’t constitute hate speech. The Supreme Court of Appeal has stated in a decided case that unless free speech crosses the boundaries laid down in Section 16 (2) of the Constitution, which states that no one is entitled to be insulated from the opinions and ideas that they do not like, even if those ideas are expressed in ways that place those persons in fear, they can’t expect the state to lock up those whose chosen forms of expression place others on a subjective state of fear or might have reasonably placed them in fear,” he said.
On Friday, the Daily News reported that the Sabha had registered a crimen injuria case against a member of the church, Simeon Bradley Chetty, and Joseph after a video circulated wherein Chetty said his father was Telugu and his mother Tamil, and they had worshipped other gods while he was growing up. He further said the name of Jesus was above every other name.
Rampersad confirmed he was representing the organisations and was going ahead with the case, expected to be in the Equality Court this week.