Court sends message of zero tolerance for antisemitism

In sentencing Matome Letsoalo, a South African magistrate has sent a clear message that antisemitic statements won’t be tolerated.

In the Randburg Magistrates Court on 30 October, presiding Magistrate Heidi Barnard sentenced Letsoalo to three years imprisonment, suspended for five years, for a string of threatening and antisemitic tweets that he posted in June 2018.

This was the first-ever criminal verdict in an antisemitism case in South Africa. The South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) lodged the charge of crimen injuria against Letsoalo, who pleaded guilty. Crimen injuria is a criminal charge defined in South African law as a wilful injury to someone’s dignity, caused by the use of obscene or racially offensive language or gestures.

In sentencing Letsoalo last Friday, Barnard said that hateful statements of the kind made by Letsoalo were in violation of the Constitution, and were becoming all too prevalent in South Africa.

She said the courts therefore had a responsibility to deal firmly with such incidents to send a strong message that such behaviour won’t be tolerated.

It was for this reason that she had decided to impose the maximum jail term allowed by a district court. However, in view of Letsoalo having entered a guilty plea and expressed remorse for his actions, the sentence would be suspended for five years subject to him not repeating the same offence.

It was also the first time the SAJBD went the criminal route, having in the past resolved issues of hate speech and antisemitism through mediation and education, favouring conciliation over confrontation.

The SAJBD has often turned to the Equality Court or the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC).

The definition of what constitutes prohibited hate speech is still being debated because of a pending challenge to the relevant section of the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act in the Constitutional Court.

Because of this, the SAJBD felt that going the civil route – such as through the Equality Court or the SAHRC – wouldn’t be an effective option, and instead opted to follow criminal proceedings.

In recent months, the SAJBD’s representatives have laid several charges of crimen injuria against alleged crusading antisemites, believing justice will be better served by the appropriate criminal courts.

Two such cases are still pending.

Johannesburg resident Jan Lamprecht, who has said among many hateful things that “there is no good Jew but a dead Jew” is due to appear in the Randburg Magistrates Court later this week after a protection order was laid against him by the SAJBD’s Professor Karen Milner.

Milner received threats from Lamprecht and his supporters after she laid a charge of crimen injuria against him.

Earlier this year, the SAJBD laid a criminal charge against Hitler sympathiser, Simone Abigail Kriel of Pretoria, for allegedly posting antisemitic and inflammatory messages on her Instagram page in May.

Kriel, a social-media influencer, is well known in gym and fitness circles. Following this, hateful online messages on her Instagram and Facebook profile have been taken down.

Some high-profile crimen injuria cases have made the news in recent years.

The late former estate agent Penny Sparrow sparked anger in South Africa after she compared black beachgoers to monkeys in a Facebook post after New Years’ Eve in 2016. She was found guilty of hate speech in the Equality Court, and later pleaded guilty to crimen injuria, becoming the first South African convicted for racist slurs.

Former realtor Vicky Momberg was convicted in March 2018 of using racist insults against a black policeman, and was found guilty of crimen injuria and sentenced to two years in jail. She used the “k-word” more than 40 times against police officers and 10111 operators trying to help her after a smash-and-grab incident. She was the first person in South Africa to spend time in jail for crimen injuria. She was sentenced to three years imprisonment, of which one year was suspended for a period of three years on condition that she didn’t commit crimen injuria again.

Adam Catzavelos pleaded guilty to crimen injuria in 2019. He admitted to recording a video on a beach in Greece in which he used the “k-word” while celebrating the lack of black people around him.

SAJBD National Director Wendy Kahn welcomed Letsoalo’s sentence, saying that the ruling had established an important precedent for similar cases that the SAJBD had laid and might lay in the future, and heralded tougher consequences for antisemites.

“The maximum sentence is an encouraging demonstration of the seriousness with which the courts are viewing hate speech, in this case antisemitism, and I believe it will be a deterrent to people who feel they are free to engage in such behaviour in our country,” she said.