Minister of Transport, Fikile Mbalula accused Nike of making a racist shoe that resembles the old Apartheid flag on Twitter.
Within seconds he received backlash on Twitter, while a very few Twitter users agreed with him, others strongly disagreed. One of the Twitter users that disagreed is the South African middle-distance runner Caster Semenya. She pointed out if that was his view, then the JMPD cars would be categorized as racist too.
With no disrespect I suppose this makes it one as the minister of transport. Some comments are so disappointing coming from our leaders thoughts. Afterall those are just colors. pic.twitter.com/EGS5TeP3kg
— Caster Semenya (@caster800m) December 8, 2019
This comes after AfriForum appeals against the ruling of the old flag.
The civil rights organization AfriForum says it will appeal against the Equality Court’s ruling that displaying the old national flag is hate speech.
It comes shortly after the Court of Appeals ruling Friday that Art. 10 of the Equality Promotion Act and the Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act, which deals with hate speech, is unconstitutional.
The Court of Appeal found Art. 10 is too “vague” and the scope too wide and in the process violates the right to freedom of speech and expression.
He emphasized that AfriForum does not display the flag itself because it can offend.
“To interpret AfriForum’s defense of freedom of speech in the case as an attempt to justify the violation of people’s dignity during apartheid is a willful distortion of AfriForum’s position.”
