Hassan İsilow
19 June 2018•Update: 20 June 2018
By Hassan Isilow
JOHANNESBURG
The South African Minority Rights Equality Movement (Samrem) has said it will take opposition leader Julius Malema to court for making a racial slur against Indians.
Over the weekend, while celebrating Youth Day, Malema told a crowd: “The majority of Indians in [South Africa] are racist. I’m not saying all, I’m saying [a] majority.”
Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters Party (EFF) is the third-largest political party in Parliament.
Samrem Chair Daleep Lutchman told local media he would meet his legal team to decide what charges to press against the EFF leader for “going back to the apartheid system of classifying people by race”.
Malema’s comments have caused nationwide outrage, with some calling it divisive and intended to cause violence against Indians.
“Our research indicates that it is nonsense to suggest that people of Indian descent or of any other racially defined group are collectively holding antagonistic racist attitudes towards others,” Micheal Morris of the South African Institute of Race Relations told local radio 702.
Morris says politicians should know better than to make divisive racial statements. South Africa has a sizable Indian community involved in all sectors of the economy, with the majority living in Durban.
It is illegal in South Africa to make racist comments that can lead to division and violence.
