Mngxitama defends hate speech allegations

NICOLA MILTZ

SAJBD earlier this year lodged a complaint in the Equality Court accusing Mngxitama of hate speech after he posted two tweets which the Board claimed were “grossly insulting, racist and hurtful, especially to members of the Jewish community”.

On August 24 at 05:20, Mnxitama posted: “For those claiming the legacy of the holocaust is ONLY negative think about the lampshades and Jewish soap.”

Later that day at 17:28 he posted a further tweet which read: “I concur with @helenzille that the aroma of the burning flesh from the furnace of the holocaust may wet the appetite of the S.A. cannibals”.

In papers before the Equality Court held at the South Gauteng High Court, Wendy Kahn, national director of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) said: “The comments were clearly aimed at mocking the community over the mass murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime during World War 2.”

On behalf of the Board, Kahn said: “This has caused enormous offence to Jewish South Africans, most of whom had family members who died in the Nazi genocide, and for whom the Holocaust is a constant, painful memory.

“By his malicious comments, Mr Mngxitama belittled the trauma that Jews feel about the Nazi genocide, and in fact taunted them with it. He further infringed on the fundamental right to dignity of South African Jews by depicting Jewish lives as being so worthless as to make the mass murder of Jews, as well as the desecration of their corpses, as to be something to make a joke about.”

Kahn said these comments were “extremely hurtful and disquieting”.

“The blatant anti-Jewish hate speech… was deeply insulting to me on a personal level and to my fellow Jewish community members in general.

“What is of added concern to me, is that he is someone who represents a political constituency and therefore is in a position to influence others to adopt and propagate similarly hateful views.”

In an answering affidavit Mngxitama denies all these allegations calling them “baseless”.

“I deny that my tweets constitute hate speech,” he says.

With reference to Western Cape Premier Helen Zille’s pro colonialism tweets earlier this year, he said, his first tweet was a “clear political response by me to Helen Zille’s first pro-colonialism tweet…’For those claiming legacy of colonialism was ONLY negative, think of our independent judiciary, transport infrastructure, piped water etc.’ I was merely paraphrasing Zille in my tweet”.

His second tweet too, he says, “was in response to Zille’s tweet to cannibalism which was on the same day and which was intended on her part to hurt, was rendered irrelevant by the white silence in this respect”.

He said his tweets have been “decontextualised” by the Board and his other “detractors”.

“The truth is that the tweets by me were posted on the very same day that BLF took Helen Zille to court.

“My tweets have been deliberately misrepresented and its meaning distorted.

“It is… abundantly clear that my tweets were aimed at exposing the badness of Helen Zille’s naked racism manifested in her utterances. What is also clear is my outrage against the glossing over or miniaturisation by whites of the horrors of the black holocaust of colonialism in comparison with the white response to the Jewish holocaust.

“My tweets have certainly exposed selective outrage on the part of whites which in turn dismisses the collective pain of blacks and gives recognition only to white suffering.”

He goes further to say the charges against him, including that of him attacking the constitutional rights to equality and dignity of Jewish South Africans, is “suggestive of hypocrisy”.

He said the response by the SAJBD to his tweets “proves” his point, “Where is their (SAJBD’s) outrage against Zille? Where is their case against Zille in the court?” He accuses the Board of not expressing any “public moral outrage against Zille for her pro-colonialism utterances.”.

Kahn said in court papers: “It should be stressed… that the Jewish community’s right to dignity and equality is not conditional on its representative organisations first condemning human rights violations against other groups. It is an absolute right guaranteed to all citizens under the Constitution… the SAJBD is in reality on record as having frequently condemned all forms of racism, xenophobia and related bigotry. It is not in a position to launch cases in respect of each complaint.”

He accused the Jewish community in South Africa and the Board, of being “very bad at self-reflection” citing two newspaper articles to back himself, one by Kim Heller and the other by Rebecca Hodes, which were largely critical of the community’s responses following his tweets.

He said he was “exercising his rights” if one were to take into account “the aim, purpose, intention and meaning of my comments, and the employment of irony to achieve the desired ends”.

They are “written to show the hypocrisy of whites in their contradictory responses to the Jewish and the black holocausts. The intention was to counter the reasoning of Zille and to expose the naked racism, including the double standards or hypocrisy of whites in their different responses to the two holocausts.”

He denies his comments were racist “at the very least my comments were meant to correct and address racism by pointing out the… selective rage of whites when it comes to responding to the two holocausts, namely the Jewish and black holocaust and to atrocities characterised by black pain as opposed to white pain generally.

He denies his comments amount to hate speech and therefore says there is no need to apologise.

SAJBD contends that the “hateful material” that was published and placed in the public domain by Mngxitama on his Twitter profile, amounts to harassment and hate speech.

“In addition to in and of themselves being deeply hurtful and offensive, Mngxitama’s tweets elicited numerous further overtly anti-Semitic comments in the social media.”

Kahn said Mngxitama’s comments are anti-Semitic, hurtful, harmful, inciteful and undermine the fundamental right to dignity to which all citizens of South Africa are entitled and that for various reasons “his comments amount to hate speech”.

Mngxitama denies the allegations.

The Board said it was “important” that Mngxitama undergo an educational sensitivity training course, suggesting the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre.

“At such a course he would (hopefully) become aware of the horrors of where his racist hate-filled conduct could lead… Hopefully his hatred and bitterness will be directed at making positive changes to society; rather than his regular taunting, mocking and heaping scorn on those he targets.”

To this suggestion Mngxitama said: “The call for me to be educated by Zionists is aimed at humiliating me and reproduces the violence of colonialism.”

He said the Board did not “seek an audience” with him, it “did not seek a debate with me. Their response shows their deep-seated belief… that blacks are cognitive cripples.”

The case is before Judge Lotter Wepener. Both parties await further instructions.