Just say sorry, Kahn says to Masuku and Cosatu

ANT KATZ

The Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) has announced its intention to appeal last week’s Equality Court ruling that their international relations secretary, Bongani Masuku, must apologise to South African Jewry for anti-Semitic statements he made in early 2009.

The Equality Court ordered Masuku to make “an unconditional apology”. It recognised that: “even if… such apology will plainly not erase the contents of the impugned statements, it should, most importantly, recognise the fact that the statements are found to be hurtful and hate speech”.

Wendy Kahn, national director of the SA Jewish Board of Deputies, told Jewish Report this week that the Board “condemns all forms of hate in our country and would hope that Masuku would end this eight-year litigation process by just acknowledging the hurt caused to fellow South Africans”.

Masuku originally made extremely inflammatory remarks, most of them at a public talk at Wits University, in which he openly threatened and incited violence against the country’s Jewish community, in the wake of Operation Cast Lead, the penultimate Israeli incursion into Gaza, to stop Gazans from firing rockets on Israeli civilians.

In a statement, Cosatu said after the outcome of the Equality Court case, that it “shall be appealing the case to affirm the importance of our constitutionally guaranteed rights and defend the cause of justice and equality, particularly in a country with such a horrific history of racial dehumanisation, subjugation and discrimination of inferior races by the master race, using all institutions and means at its disposal to perpetuate inequalities in the name of fighting for equality”.

It added: “Given the importance of the many legal principles at stake, we are of the view that this judgment, if left unchallenged, will have a negative effect on freedom of speech, particularly as it concerns freedom of speech of contentious political issues.”

Kahn said, however, that “while we note comments made by Cosatu in a press statement issued earlier this week, we have had no formal notification of the appeal.

“We would have hoped that Bongani Masuku would have recognised the hurt that he caused through his threat to our community and would have apologised as instructed by the judge.”

Cosatu, however, says it fears that if it apologises for threatening to harm and extradite South African Jews, “it may result in the effective erosion of the rights and democratic gains by workers”.

Masuku would not comment when contacted by SA Jewish Report.