This was the recommendation by Bongani Majola, the chairperson of the Commission during media brief on Wednesday, who also stated that from 2016 to 2018 they received five complaints against the EFF’s leader.
“We looked at the facts, context, the applicable law and the Constitution,” said Majola.
“We came to the conclusion that while the acts forming the subject of the complaints may be offensive, they do not meet the legal threshold to qualify as hate speech,” he said.
“We took quite some time to consider these Malema matters, partly because the law itself in this regard is not yet crystal clear, and partly because we wanted to view and review the conclusions that the legal principals seemed to be compelling us towards.”
The matter was now destined for the Constitutional Court, he continued.
Majola said the decision by the commission did not fully exonerate Malema, saying that his utterances were “still quite problematic to us in a democratic society”.
The EFF’s firebrand has been on the receiving end for his strong and at times insensitive comments such as calling DA’s leader Mmusi Maimane a “garden boy”.
At the time of publishing EFF’s spokesperson Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi was unavailable for a comment.
Image (EFFs leader Sello Julius Malema was exonerated by the Commission but his utterances are still disturbing.)
