Pretoria - Gauteng ANC chairperson and Education MEC Panyaza Lesufi looks set to battle it out with AfriForum in court over his claims that the lobby group is a “racist organisation”.
Lesufi has until Friday to pay a bill of R500 000, or defend his comments in court.
He allegedly made the comments during an interview with the SABC last month, after his election as ANC chairperson in Gauteng.
In their letter of demand served on Lesufi on July 5, lawyers for AfriForum claimed that Lesufi’s comments were “wrongful and defamatory” to their client, saying he sought to cast the organisation as racist.
Lesufi was quoted as saying: “I hate racism, racists are meaningless and useless. I will never defend a racist. We are what we are now as a country because of racists. I have a strong, strong view against racism. If anyone wants me to defend and glorify racism, I will never do that. They must not come to me.
“Racists are mindless, useless and selfish. We must not tolerate racists. AfriForum and many other organisations that are coming in our country to represent a certain race and a certain language, must not be tolerated.”
AfriForum’s lawyers said Lesufi’s comments had “no factual basis or fair comment basis”.
AfriForum is demanding that Lesufi retract his comments and pay R500 000 before the close of business on Friday.
As the Friday deadline draws closer, Lesufi took to Twitter to respond to the letter of demand, saying “Try something better, I will not be intimidated nor bullied by you @AfriForum! I fought for freedom of speech. I defeated the apartheid regime. Le eng Lena (who are you)?”
AfriForum said it was not the first time that Lesufi had made allegations against the organisation.
In the same letter, it alleged that on October 24 last year, Lesufi posted on his Twitter social media profile: “Me back down to racists? Never! I will never apologise to racists.
“Racists are evil and mindless. They assured me that they are not going to harm me and my family, and I took their word. So where’s the lie?”
AfriForum CEO Kallie Kriel said they now wanted to sue Lesufi because of his statement on November 24, 2019, that AfriForum had attempted to assassinate him and had been stalking his children.
“We were willing to leave the case if Lesufi said he regretted his statements and retracted them unconditionally,” said Kriel.
“Lesufi agreed and signed the agreement. This action by him shows that there was no factual basis for his accusations against AfriForum.
“However, when it was reported that Lesufi had backed down to AfriForum … he changed his stance by indicating that he did not apologise to AfriForum,” Kriel said.
Pretoria News