ANC youth leader guilty of hate speech over rape
Julius Malema claimed that the woman who accused Zuma of rape had a ‘nice time’
ONE OF THE most influential politicians in South Africa and a leading member of the ANC has been found guilty of hate speech over comments he made about the woman who accused president Jacob Zuma of rape.
Julius Malema, the leader of the African National Congress youth league, said that the woman must have had a "nice time" with Zuma because she stayed for breakfast and asked for taxi money to get home. Zuma was later acquitted of rape.
But Malema (above) has now been ordered to make an unconditional apology and pay 50,000 rand to a shelter for abused women after he was taken to the Johannesburg equality court by a group that campaigns for women's rights.
Sonke Gender Justice said that Malema's comments to a group of students last year perpetuated myths about rape. The court agreed and magistrate Colleen Collis said Malema was guilty of hate speech. "It clearly demeans and humiliates women … The uttered words constitute harassment as contemplated in the equality act," she said.
Malema is a highly divisive figure in South Africa but is touted by many as a future president. He is one of Zuma's key supporters, and his ANC youth league was instrumental in the president’s election last year. In 2008 he warned that the body was "prepared to take up arms and kill for Zuma".
The 29-year-old's verbal attacks on his political enemies are notorious. He described Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille as a "racist little girl" and said that she was "suffering from satanism". But he has been accused of racism himself and caused controversy last week when he led college students in singing the Apartheid-era protest song "Shoot the boere, they are rapists".
He once referred to a member of the Communist Party as a "white messiah".
His unreconstructed attitude to the female sex was illustrated when he attacked rival politician Patricia de Lille by saying: "Patricia doesn't look like a married woman. There's no normal man who can marry Patricia. If Patricia has got a husband, that husband must divorce Patricia and come and look for well-mannered and beautiful women in the ANC." ·
