Facebook Live broadcasts by National Coloured Congress President, Fadiel Adams, have landed him in hot water after the Equality Court ruled that they were racially offensive.
Adams was accused of using hate speech, harassing Cape Town City Manager, Lungelo Mbandazayo, and engaging in unjust discrimination.
The Equality Court found that Adams was being racist when he referred to Mbandazayo as “from the Eastern Cape” in a live broadcast in February and March 2023.
Adams reportedly said: “What has happened here guys is that the Cape Flats has been robbed again. And a man from the Eastern Cape has made a decision to cancel it. Coloured lives don’t matter.”
The war of words between Adams and Mbandazayo stretches back to 2018 when a contract for repairing staircases on council flats was cancelled.
Adams, who was a City Councillor at the time, claimed the cancellation was due to fraud and corruption, and demanded access to a forensic investigation report conducted by the City, which was not made public.
Judge Nobahle Mangcu-Lockwood of the Western Cape High Court last week found that Adams’ reference to the Eastern Cape was a racist cliche meant to depict Mbandazayo as inferior and unable, rather than a neutral geographic reference.
Mangcu-Lockwood found: “In my view, the respondent’s speech meets all of the requirements for hate speech as set out in Qwelane and Mauku.
“I have also already rejected the respondent’s explanation that the actual target of his statements was the DA. The clear implication of the utterances is that the leadership of a black African person is incapable of addressing the concerns of coloured communities.”
Adams was ordered to pay Mbandazayo’s legal expenses, remove the social media post by today and publicly apologise to the City Manager.
Adams says he will appeal the ruling.
Adams says: “Apparently in the City of Cape Town, the City Manager can admit to unlawfully cancelling a contract. The result of this injures people on the Cape Flats, which causes bones to break and he is the victim. Make this makes sense.”
He was referring to Miche Pheiffer, 22, from Ocean View who broke her leg after falling through the concrete staircase of a council flat in Uiltjie Hof.
Residents have filed several complaints with the City about the poor state of the staircases but nothing was done.
byron.lukas@inl.co.za