Johannesburg – EFF leader Julius Malema says Patriotic Alliance (PA) deputy president Kenny Kunene was targeting his ethnicity when he called him a cockroach.
This is contained in court papers filed by Malema last month at the Johannesburg Equality Court.
Malema is seeking an order to force Kunene to retract and apologise for his utterances.
The red beret brigade leader has also asked the court to consider sending the matter to the National Prosecuting Authority to explore the possibility of criminally prosecuting Kunene for crimen injuria.
Kunene, who was convicted and served several years in jail for fraud before venturing into politics, was invited to an interview by eNCA news anchor Thulasizwe Simelane to discuss his fledgling party’s role in coalition talks with other parties after the local government elections last year that saw the ANC losing, among others, Tshwane, Ekurhuleni and Joburg metros in Gauteng.
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Kenny Kunene
During the interview, Kunene attacked Malema and called him a “cockroach” and “a little frog” that he was going to deal with. “Julius is just an irritating cockroach that I must deal with publicly,” said Kunene.
“I will call you, I will call all the press and I will begin to deal with this and show you that Julius, whatever he is, is a criminal. And I’m going to show South Africans the crimes that he is involved in … and the real truth why I left the EFF because of this cockroach.
“So, I’m going to deal with this cockroach because we have given him time, we have given him respect, he has got his issues.”
Malema said the term “cockroach” was used to justify the inhuman treatment meted out to the Tutsis by Hutus during the Rwandan genocide.
He said given the “painful history of the usage of the word “cockroach”, it was hardly a stretch of his imagination that Kunene used the term as a dog whistle for him to be targeted for his tribal ethnicity, among others.
“The respondents’ [Kunene and PA] speech thus not only impugned my dignity as an ‘other’ [sub-human, deserving of sub-human treatment], but propagated for violence against me [given that such vermin are usually ‘exterminated’].
“This he did on the sole basis of me being a political opponent and evidently based on my ethnicity,” reads the affidavit in part.
In his replying affidavit, the flamboyant Kunene poured cold water on Malema’s arguments.
“The applicant seeks to identify himself as being of a different ethnic group to that of me. However, the applicant does not make out any case in respect of the context in South Africa between the applicants’ ethnic group and that of mine,” Kunene replies in part.
In the totality of the factors advanced, Malema said Kunene’s utterances must also be understood to be amounting to hate speech in terms of the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act.
Malema said although former speaker of the National Assembly Baleka Mbete also previously called him a “cockroach,” but later apologised, Kunene showed him the middle finger after his legal team asked him to do so.
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