After 9-hours of non-stop meetings I have just had time to read the Supreme Court of Appeal's judgment upholding my appeal against the Public Protector.
My appeal followed the Public Protector's finding that I had breached the Executive Ethics Code by my series of tweets on the lessons I had learnt during a trip to Singapore in 2017. One of the tweets in the series concluded that the legacy of colonialism had not ONLY been negative. I had learnt that Singapore's success was built on several key factors, one of which was that the post-colonial government had built on certain aspects of colonialism's legacies, which they considered beneficial, and not merely sought to destroy them all (as we are in South Africa).
The Public Protector concluded that this observation amounted to hate speech, because some people took offence, and because my apology for the offence was interpreted as proof that I had committed a grievous violation of the Constitution and the Executive Ethics Code.
The Supreme Court of Appeal overturned every one of the Public Protector's findings, as well as those of the High Court, and upheld my appeal with costs.
The most important sentence, from my perspective, in the entire judgment is this one:
"Objectively considered, from the point of view of a reasonable reader, the message conveyed by the tweets is that Ms Zille's perception was that, although bad and unfortunate, colonialism yielded some positive aspects".
That is exactly what a rational reading of my Tweets conveyed. It was one of the many lessons I learnt in Singapore.
What's more, most historians and our own school history textbooks have drawn similar conclusions about colonialism's legacy.
This important judgment comes after 5 years of fighting the hysterical level of manufactured outrage, driven by networks of interconnected computers (more than real people) designed to destroy me politically and personally. Sadly, the DA also joined in this feeding frenzy under its previous leadership.
I am glad I fought back. And at last the Supreme Court of Appeal has, with meticulous analysis of the Constitution, the law, and legal precedent, upheld my legal defence and vindicated my right to tell the truth as I see it.
This judgment will be used in decades to come, to protect the rights of countless others to do the same. The fight was worth it.
It is an important day, not only for me, but all those of us who seek to tell inconvenient truths in an era of irrationality and compulsive offence-seeking.
