EFF welcomes the ruling of the Equality Court dismissing SANEF's hate speech application

24 October 2019

The EFF welcomes the ruling of the Equality Court which has dismissed the South African National Editors Forum's application to declare the statements of the CIC Julius Malema calling on fighters to defend the revolution from biased journalists as hate speech. The application sought to portray the EFF as violating media freedom and the rights of journalists to dignity and freedom of speech. The Equality Court correctly dismissed them. The judgement stated that there was no evidence of any hate speech or incitement of hatred to journalists.

We must therefore reiterate that journalists who take a side, using journalism as a platform to pursue the propaganda interests of politicians, must never be regarded as journalists.

When they descend to the arena, they must be treated as having taken sides and no longer acting in the professional interests of journalism. From all accounts, it is clear that these journalists, together with SANEF, have made the EFF their personal project, seeking to discredit it, whilst promoting Ramaphosa and Gordhan.

It is important to welcome this judgment also in light of the revelations by SAPS witnesses at the Zondo Commission of Inquiry into State Capture, that Ranjeni Munusamy and four other journalists were being paid by Crime Intelligence to plant stories in the media. The judgement is therefore an important opportunity for journalists in this country to critically re-introspect their conduct and profession. In particular how it has been abused and discredited by many amongst them who are decidedly bias, politically compromised and ethically questionable.

Above all, nothing is more worrying than the fact that these journalists who litigated against the EFF continued in many newsrooms to write stories, decide editorial contents and columns on the EFF despite the obvious conflict of interest. How is it that no one asked them the critical question: "Can you fairly cover the EFF when you have initiated a legal case against them; are you not conflicted?"

South Africans must know that StratCom is no longer simply an apartheid covert communication operation, but a real phenomenon of embedded journalism, infiltrated and decidedly bias reporting which seeks to discredit enemies of the system. Therefore, revolutionaries have an inevitable and unapologetic duty to defend themselves, by any revolutionary means possible. All fighters must continue to guard the revolution on social media platforms, particularly from embedded and bias journalists.

Issued by Mbuyiseni Ndlozi, National Spokesperson, EFF, 24 October 2019