The Patriotic Alliances PA suspended Deputy President Kenny Kunene has failed to appeal the Equality Courts 2023 finding that his labelling of EFF leader Julius Malema as a cockroach four times in a television interview in the context of a political party debate is hate speech.
The High Court in Johannesburg upheld with costs the Equality Courts core finding that the repeated use of the word cockroach to describe Malema amounted to hate speech.
The central question in Kunenes appeal is whether one political leader who calls another political leader a cockroach commits an act of hate speech.
Kunene argued in the appeal that his utterances do not fall within the ambit of section 10 of the Equality Act because they were personal attacks on Malema, rather than on any group of which Malema is a member.
The High Court, however, found, among other things, that the use of the word cockroach would reasonably have been understood as evincing a clear intent to harm and promoted hatred of Malema and that the use of the word conveys that Malema is not human.
