Roets insulted dignity of the court – foundation

AfriForum deputy CEO Ernst Roets has disrespected and insulted the dignity of the courts and should be found in contempt, the Nelson Mandela Foundation has submitted. News24 notes the foundation was arguing in the Equality Court, sitting in the Gauteng High Court (Johannesburg), in its urgent contempt of court application against Roets before Judge Colin Lamont. The application was brought after Roets took to Twitter and posted the apartheid flag, asking: ‘Did I just commit hate speech?’. It was posted a few hours after a scathing judgment banning its gratuitous display. Deputy Judge President Phineas Mojapelo declared that the ‘gratuitous display’ of the flag constituted hate speech in terms of section 10(1) of the Equality Act, unfair discrimination in terms of section 7 of the Act, and harassment in terms of section 11. Arguing on behalf of the foundation, Advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi said there was no way that AfriForum and Roets were not aware that the judgment prohibited the gratuitous display of the flag. ‘It says any display constitutes hate speech.’ Defending his actions, Roets maintained that he posted the tweet in his personal capacity and not on behalf of the lobby group. He submitted that he posted the question and image for academic reasons. Ngcukaitobi said as a person in a leadership position for the lobby group, Roets was indirectly acting on the group's behalf when he posted the flag to his Twitter account. Ngcukaitobi added that there was no academic context and questioned why it was necessary for Roets to have an academic inquiry. He added that the fact that there was no direct interdict against the lobby group did not mean it was not in contempt.

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Lamont questioned Ngcukaitobi extensively about how Roets could be held in contempt when Mojapelo’s order did not prohibit or ban the display of the flag – it only declared that to do so would be hate speech. Lamont suggested that the right course of action would have been to go back to the Equality Court, says a Mail & Guardian report. Ngcukaitobi argued that Lamont’s approach to the law of contempt was ‘a technicist and narrow’ one. The essence of contempt lay in the violation of the dignity and authority of the court. This could take various forms; and there would be times where even if there is no prohibitory interdict, still the conduct in question ‘strikes at the heart of judicial authority’. Referring to the interview on Radio 702, Ngcukaitobi said: ‘He compared your brother (Mojapelo) to an apartheid court. This is the worst insult to the Deputy Judge President’. He added that Roets had also compared himself to Nelson Mandela, invoking his name ‘in the most grotesque way’. When asked by Lamont whether Roets was not just ‘stirring the pot’, Ngcukaitobi said that, in SA, one did not stir the pot on certain issues – these included race and the rule of law. ‘You don’t play with black pain,’ he said. However Cedric Puckrin SC for Roets and AfriForum argued that Mojapelo’s order did not contain a prohibition so they could not be held in contempt. Puckrin said that, in the radio interview, all that Roets was really saying was that it is not disrespectful to a court to disagree with a judgment. Puckrin added that if Lamont did not reject the contempt application outright, his clients still wanted an opportunity to argue their case as they were only given one day to respond. Judgment has been reserved.

Full Mail & Guardian report