Gauteng govt sports promoter faces anti-white hate speech charge
Cape Town - The SA Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) is taking government sports promoter Velaphi Khumalo to the Equality Court on a hate speech charge.
He said in a Facebook post in January that whites should suffer the same fate as Jews under the Nazi regime.
He should apologise unconditionally in public and be interdicted from communicating hate speech in future, SAHRC spokesperson Gushwell Brooks said on Friday.
The civil application to be heard in the Equality Court would be in terms of Section 10 of the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act.
Khumalo posted his comments during public outrage over former estate agent Penny Sparrow's remarks equating black people to monkeys.
She has since been found guilty of hate speech and has apologised. On Thursday, she tried unsuccessfully to appeal the finding at the Scottburgh Equality Court.
Complaints
In his Facebook post, Khumalo wrote: "I want to cleans this country of all white people. we must act as Hitler did to the Jews. I don’t believe any more that the is a large number of not so racist whit people . I’m starting to be sceptical even of those within our Movement the ANC. I will from today unfriend all white people I have as friends from today u must be put under the same blanket as any other racist white because secretly u all are a bunch of racist fuck heads. as we have already seen.'' (all sic)
He apologised for the post in an email to News24 later that day.
"I have seen first-hand what racism and oppression of any race can do to a country and would not want my son to grow up in such a society," Khumalo said.
His employer, the Gauteng sport department, responded swiftly and suspended him with pay.
Khumalo was charged with serious misconduct for having “conducted himself in an improper, disgraceful and unacceptable manner”.
He pleaded guilty and committed himself to corrective measures.
However, that was not the end of it for him because the commission received a number of complaints about his comments.
The commission would ask that he be ordered to regularly communicate with it and be monitored for six months. It would ask that damages be awarded.
If the SAHRC was successful, any damages awarded would go toward a non-profit organisation that promotes tolerance, social cohesion, non-racialism, and reconciliation in South Africa.
The Equality Court would be asked to forward the final order to the Director of Public Prosecutions to investigate laying criminal charges.
This article first appeared on News24.
