NATIONAL NEWS - ANC member Velaphi Khumalo let rip on Facebook that South Africa needed to be cleansed of whites. He said whites needed to be treated as Hitler treated the Jews.

He was responding to an earlier racist comment on social media from Penny Sparrow, who referred to blacks as “monkeys”.

Both, no doubt, have come to rue their remarks. Both recanted. But Judge Roland Sutherland of the Equality Court in Johannesburg was not satisfied with Khumalo’s retraction, especially after Khumalo more recently decided it wasn’t hate speech after all.

On Friday, Sutherland declared that Khumalo’s remarks were hate speech and interdicted him from repeating them. He also ordered Khumalo to issue an apology to all South Africans.

The matter was first raised in the Roodepoort Magistrates’ Court (which also has an Equality Court) by the ANC. However, the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) was unaware of this earlier hearing at the lower court, and brought it before the Equality Court in Johannesburg.

Given the large number of racist remarks on social media, the ruling should give keyboard warriors pause for thought.

Read more on the Caxton publication, The Citizen.