Johannesburg - DA leader John Steenhuisen has announced that the party will be filing charges against EFF leader Julius Malema and the ANC government with the United Nations Council.
Steenhuisen said in a live broadcast of his speech that the party will be lodging a complaint against Malema’s alleged repeated hate speech utterances after he sang the “Kill the Boer” song during the EFF’s 10th anniversary celebrations at the FNB Stadium on Saturday.
Steenhuisen said the charge would be laid in terms of Malema’s violation of at least three key UN charters.
These included the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Article 3 of the Convention makes it a punishable offence to direct and publicly incite people to commit mass murder on the basis of their identity.
He said the second element will be lodged as part of the Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities.
“Today, we can announce that we are filing charges against both Julius Malema and the ANC government at the United Nations Council. The first element of our United Nations case will focus on Malema’s repeated incitement of ethnic violence. The second element will charge the ANC national government before the United Nations over years of its long failure to take action against its one-time protégé, even as brutal farm murders continue to escalate in the wake of Malema’s demagoguery.“
Steenhuisen said the party had recently forced the South African government to live up to its international responsibility to comply with warrants issued by the International Criminal Court.
“We will now do the same to force it to act against Malema. In addition to turning to the international community, we will also file a complaint with Parliament’s ethics committee against Malema in his capacity as a member of Parliament.
“We are further obtaining legal advice on approaching the public protector and the courts. For more than a decade, the South African state has utterly failed to use appropriate internal remedies to stop Malema,” Steenhuisen added.
Attempts to get comment from the EFF were not successful at the time of publication.
Steenhuisen also pleaded with President Cyril Ramaphosa to publicly condemn Malema for inciting racial intolerance.
“I specifically call on President Cyril Ramaphosa to break his silence and publicly condemn Malema. To the media, I ask that you put pressure on Ramaphosa to come out of hiding for once.
“If Ramaphosa fails to denounce Malema, it can only mean that he is too cowardly to honour the oath he took to uphold the Constitution and defend all the people of South Africa,” he said.
The Star