EQUALITY COURT ORDER
Cosatu’s persistent anti-Semitism defies Constitution
Racism and anti-Semitism are a tort against the Constitution itself and against the democratic state as a whole
Judgment was handed down in the Equality Court last week, unequivocally upholding a South African Human Rights Commission ruling that Cosatu international relations spokesman Bongani Masuku had been guilty of anti-Semitic hate speech, for which he must apologise to the Jewish community. This will have come as a shock to Masuku and Cosatu. All along, they have insisted that the allegation of anti-Semitism was not merely mistaken, but that it was dishonest. They treated the representative institutions of the Jewish community as being so lacking in moral fibre, they were prepared to accuse people of anti-Semitism as a ruse, as a way of trying to silence criticism of Israel. When the commission ruled Masuku was indeed guilty of anti-Semitic hate speech, the commission was treated as though it had become part of this conspiracy. And when the Equality Court upheld the commission’s finding, Masuku and Cosatu treated that institution as though it had been fooled by cunning Zionists into pro...
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