South African youth leader calls courts racist
JOHANNESBURG (AP) -- The South African governing party's youth leader has called the courts "racist" after he lost a hate speech case...
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — The South African governing party’s youth leader has called the courts “racist” after he lost a hate speech case.
Julius Malema’s comments Wednesday were his first since a judge ruled against him Monday for singing the apartheid-era song “Shoot the Boer.” The judge said the song goes against the spirit of reconciliation South Africans have tried to foster since apartheid’s end in 1994. “Boer,” which means “farmer” in the language of Dutch-descended South Africans, is sometimes used for all whites.
Malema says South Africa’s court system, where some judges appointed under apartheid interpret laws written since 1994, has not been transformed. He says, if that “means it’s racist, then so be it.”
Malema, who is black, says the now-banned song is a symbolic call to fight enduring oppression.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press.
