A Grave Distortion of History, Philosophy, and the Nature of Political Speech in a Democratic Society

The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) notes the ruling delivered by the Equality Court on 27 August 2025, which upholds the South African Human Rights Commission’s (SAHRC) claims that statements made by our President and Commander-in-Chief, Julius Malema, constitute hate speech and incitement to violence. This judgment is a grave distortion of history, philosophy, and the nature of political speech in a democratic society.

The Court concluded that certain remarks made by the Commander-in-Chief at the EFF Western Cape 3rd Provincial People’s Assembly on 16 October 2022 “could reasonably be construed as demonstrating a clear intention to incite harm.” The Court relied on Section 10 of the Equality Act, acknowledging that freedom of expression is a core constitutional right and an “indispensable facilitator of democracy”. However, the Court held that this right is not absolute and does not protect speech that advocates hatred or incites harm.

This conclusion is fundamentally flawed and deliberately misreads both the context and the meaning of the speech. The Court interpreted Malema’s statements: “You must never be scared to kill. A revolution demands that at some point there must be killing,”  “This is a war between white supremacy and black consciousness, you must know the two will never meet,” and “Racism is violence and violence can only be ended by violence,” as literal instructions to kill white people.

This interpretation strips the speech of its political, historical, and ideological context, reducing a revolutionary critique to criminality. It assumes that the reasonable listener is incapable of understanding metaphor, revolutionary rhetoric, or the history of liberation struggles. The Court ignored the nature of the occasion which was a political assembly where revolutionary theory, strategy, and history are discussed and treated the speech as if it were a direct operational command to commit murder.

The Court ignored three critical realities. Firstly that Malema’s remarks followed the Brackenfell incident where white racists assaulted black protesters who were standing up to the racial exclusion of black students by the school. His comments emphasised that racism itself is violence and cannot be passively endured. Secondly, the historical context that South Africa was built on structural and physical violence against black people. The anti-apartheid struggle included armed resistance because the system left no alternative, as the system still does to this day in order to protect our children from continued racial discrimination.

Thirdly, the EFF is a Marxist-Leninist and Fanonian movement therefore our analysis of society recognises class and racial contradictions. When Malema spoke of “war,” it was a reference to the irreconcilable conflict between white supremacy and black consciousness a war of ideas and systems, not an instruction to kill white people. To criminalise this language is to criminalise black consciousness and silence any radical critique of white supremacy.

Section 16 of the Constitution guarantees freedom of expression, including political expression and our courts have previously affirmed this in cases such as the previous case against Malema for singing “Kill the Boer”, recognising that political speech enjoys heightened protection in a democracy. This judgment ignores that principle and instead aligns itself with an agenda that seeks to delegitimise revolutionary discourse.

We note the Court’s ruling as an attack on the democratic space and the right to articulate revolutionary politics. The language of revolution cannot be sanitised to comfort the sensitivities of those who continue to enjoy the fruits of colonial dispossession and have never experienced racial violence whatsoever. The real violence is the daily reality of landlessness, unemployment, and racism that black people endure.

The EFF has already instructed our lawyers to begin the process of challenging this ruling at the Supreme Court of Appeals. We do so not only in defence of our Commander-in-Chief but in defence of political freedom, historical truth, and the right of oppressed people to speak boldly against their oppression.

The EFF advocates for the rights of farm workers and rural communities.

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