Patriotic Alliance (PA) deputy president Kenny Kunene has been ordered to apologise to EFF leader Julius Malema for calling him a “cockroach”.
Kunene has been found guilty of hate speech by the Equality Court after he referred to the EFF commander-in-chief as a “cockroach” and “a little frog” in November 2021.
The court ordered Kunene to retract the statements and issue an unconditional public apology to the firebrand politician.
Handing down the verdict on Tuesday, judge Motsamai Makume said Kunene’s statements constitute hate speech as defined by the Equality Act.
Makume ordered Kunene, widely known as the Sushi King, to retract the statements and apologise within 30 days from the date of the court order. Kunene shot to infamy by eating raw sushi off the bodies of naked women.
The court also interdicted and restrained Kunene from publishing, propagating, advocating or communicating hate speech.
It directed the registrar of the high court to prepare and submit the dossier and judgment to the director of public prosecutions, within 30 days of the judgment, to determine whether the impugned statements warrant institution of criminal proceedings for crimen injuria against Kunene.
The court also ordered Kunene and the PA to pay Malema’s costs.
Malema took Kunene to court after the PA deputy president’s interview with TV news broadcaster eNCA in November 2021, where Kunene made the utterances. He wanted him to fork out R1-million for the insults.
In the interview about coalition negotiations, Kunene threatened to deal with Malema whom he referred to as a little frog and cockroach. “Julius is just an irritating cockroach that now I must deal with publicly”, Kunene said during the interview.
A day later Malema, through his lawyers, asked Kunene to retract the statements and apologise. He also asked PA president Gayton McKenzie to distance his party from Kunene’s utterances, but his pleas fell on deaf ears.
Kunene argued that he made the utterances in reaction to Malema’s statement in which he referred to the PA as a party of “amabhantinti” (jailbirds).
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