The South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) must provide protection to the national organiser of the Landless People’s Movement (LPM), Mangaliso Kubheka, and retract its hate-speech finding against him, the body said on Tuesday.
The SAHRC found Kubheka guilty of hate speech after he was reported to have said that members of the LPM would not vote in the upcoming election and that instead they would ”take farms and chase away white farmers like dogs”.
The LPM again denied that Kubheka or any other member of the organisation had made such statements.
”The SAHRC must retract its so-called hate-speech ‘finding’ against LPM national organiser Mangaliso Kubheka, and provide protection to Kubheka, his family and other LPM members whose lives have been placed in jeopardy by the SAHRC pronouncements,” the statement reads.
The LPM accused the SAHRC of ”gross procedural irregularities” when making its decision.
Kubheka has written a letter to the SAHRC asking that the commission retract its decision and reopen the matter.
”These procedural irregularities include the commission’s failure to give Kubheka a reasonable time to respond to the complaint; the commission’s flouting of its own regulations by apparently entertaining a complaint based purely on a media report; and its apparent failure to investigate further before reaching a finding without having heard Kubheka’s version,” the statement reads.
The LPM said it holds the SAHRC responsible for fomenting the ”climate of hysteria” that has gripped white agricultural bodies, white political parties and the entire white farming community in the wake of its ruling.
”Following the SAHRC’s deeply flawed ruling, the LPM has been demonised and vilified by the Freedom Front, Agri-SA, the Transvaal Agricultural Union, the Democratic Alliance and the New National Party to the extent that white farmers and their heavily armed security companies now threaten to kill our leaders with even greater impunity than is normally the case in South Africa’s untransformed rural areas.”
The LPM urged the SAHRC to apologise publicly for its erroneous finding, and to provide protection to Kubheka, his family and other endangered members of the movement.
”If anything happens to Kubheka, his family, or other LPM comrades, the LPM will hold the SAHRC and other reckless political parties and agricultural organisations directly responsible.”
The LPM stressed that it does not have any plans to ”murder white farmers like dogs”.
”Our aim is to force the government to host a national land summit where the failures of land reform can finally be addressed, and we have consistently made this reasonable demand to the government.” — Sapa