Cape Town - The Freedom Front Plus wants Black First Land First (BLF) barred from contesting the upcoming elections, saying that the party is racist and should not have been registered by the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC).
Briefing the media on Monday, FF Plus leader Pieter Groenewald said the party approached the Electoral Court in Bloemfontein on the grounds that the IEC’s approval of BLF as a registered party was irregular, illegal and invalid.
“South Africa’s Constitution states in section 1 that the South African state is based on four core values, of which non-racialism is one of them. This makes it clear that the IEC has made a big mistake. The FF Plus asks the court to rectify this error,” said Groenewald.
Both parties have been at each other's throat since the birth of BLF.
The conflict stems from multiple threats of violence, including calls by BLF leader, Andile Mngxitama, for the murder of white people.
Subsequent to these threats, the IEC warned the party to refrain from making hate speech comments.
Chief electoral officer Sy Mamabolo told the party’s secretary-general, Yerushka Chetty, that they had received numerous complaints about BLF leader Andile Mngxitama’s statements about the killing of white people, made at an event in Potchefstroom.
Mamabolo said the IEC considered the statements hate speech, which was against both the national constitution and the BLF’s own constitution.
Groenewald, however, said the IEC was not the correct platform to deal with BLF’s “racism”.
“The IEC’s poor response to the FF Plus inquiries demonstrates a shocking contempt for the matter, as the openly racist and inciting BLF poses a major threat to democracy and racial harmony in the country.
“It will be everyone’s interest to keep the BLF out of the country’s political arena and out of Parliament,” said Groenewald.