KENNY Kunene will be appealing the judgment that found him guilty of hate speech.
The deputy president of the Patriotic Alliance was taken to court in 2021, by EFF leader Julius Malema, for calling him a cockroach and little frog.
The South Gauteng High Court agreed on Tuesday, 31 January, that Kunene calling Malema a cockroach and little frog was hate speech, and he could even face possible criminal charges for it.
In a statement on Wednesday, Kunene said: “I respect the courts but I have strong grounds to feel the judgment was wrong in law and will be overturned on appeal.”
He said it was rich of Malema to take him to the Equality Court.
“He so proudly sings ‘Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer’, which somehow isn’t hate speech. For me that is incitement of violence against a minority ethnic group,” he said.
He said that Malema was spewing violence out of his mouth over and over.
“It was shameless of him to take me to court after calling Pravin Gordhan a dog that must be kicked so that the master can come out,” he said.
Responding to the judgment, the EFF said it welcomed the correct and logical finding by the court.
EFF spokesman Sinawo Tambo said the comments were not only hateful, but also did not consider the historical impact of derogatory terms used to refer to human beings.
He said Kunene was therefore not only hateful, but he was also completely ignorant of the deep history that dehumanisation had in the pre-emptive stages of violence and genocide.
“The South Gauteng High Court, therefore, correctly found that there was no retaliatory justification for his comments,” said Tambo.
