GRANT TERRENCE APPLICANT
VERSUS
CAPE ARGUS RESPONDENT
MATTER NO: 1549/01/2016
DECISION ON AN APPLICATION FOR LEAVE TO APPEAL
[1] Mr Terrence Grant (“applicant”) complained to the Press Ombudsman against an opinion piece which appeared in the edition of Cape Argus (“respondent”) of 21 January 2016. The headline read: “We must all admit to our racism in order to heal”. The opinion piece was commenting on reactions to what was generally regarded as racist remarks which had been made by one Sparrow. Some of the reactions were racist.
[2] The applicant complained that the article justified hate speech and death threats against white people; it intimidated them and justified their genocide. The respondent’s reply was that the article was a subjective opinion piece of the author, one Papenfus; furthermore, that it did do any of the harm alleged by the applicant. In his Ruling dated 9 February 2016, the Ombudsman dismissed the complaint in its entirely, hence this application.
[3] For the application to succeed, the applicant must show reasonable prospects of success before the Appeals Panel; therefore, this is what I must now assess.
[4] As the Ombudsman says in his Ruling, respondent’s reply is that the article was a report on various racial matters which were then in the lime light in. I agree with the respondent entirely that the article was not justifying any of the things applicant was alleging. I have read the article carefully. My view is that it was calling on people to be frank about the issue of racism, and confront it. In the process, it admitted, as it had to, that indeed some people justifiably got angered by what Sparrow (a white “racist”) had said, as also by what one Khumalo (a black “racist”) had said. I am afraid the applicant misunderstood the article entirely, as also the call it was making. The applicant read into the article things which were not there at all, which form the basis of his complaint. When the article for example says people “understandably responded viciously” to Sparrow’s remarks, it does not invite hatred or violence; all it does is to say that there is a problem which should be acknowledged and dealt with. Far from inciting hatred or violence, my view is that it was in fact a call on the citizenry or the nation to conduct some self-introspection.
[5] For the reasons given by the Ombudsman, and those above, I am of the view that the applicant has no reasonable prospects of success before the Appeals Panel; the application is therefore dismissed.
Dated this 4th day of April 2016
Judge B M Ngoepe, Chair, Appeals Panel