The EFF wants FW de Klerk’s comments that apartheid was not a crime against humanity declared hate speech.

The party has laid charges against the former deputy president De Klerk with the police.

Declaring his comments as hate speech, the party’s spokesperson Vuyani Pambo said, would restore the dignity of black people.

De Klerk came under immense scrutiny following the EFF’s protest, which delayed President Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation Address last month, where they argued that he was an apartheid apologist and shouldn’t be invited to the proceedings of a democratic parliament.

It was in reference to a TV interview he did about two weeks prior where he disputed that apartheid was a crime against humanity. De Klerk said during the interview that apartheid was not a genocide and that more people died during black-on-black violence just before 1994 than during apartheid.

This was contrary to the General Assembly of the United Nation’s declaration in 1973 that the regime which oppressed black people was a crime against humanity.

“De Klerk’s statement essentially means does not recognise black people as human beings that deserve justice and that apartheid was justified its oppression and killing of black people,” Pambo said.

“De Klerk in a nutshell was pissing on the graves of those murdered during the Sharpeville massacre and laughing at those who survived.”

The FW de Klerk Foundation said they did not want to comment on the EFF and their hate speech charge they laid.

Pambo said: “We have opened a case to restore the dignity of blacks, to seek justice and importantly to put the president of apartheid in his rightful place, prison”.

Ramaphosa during the Sona debate said denying that apartheid was crime against humanity was treasonous.

He said, at the time, that in 1973 people representing countries from all over the world looked at what the apartheid regime was doing in the country and declared it a crime.

“Apartheid was so immoral in its conception and so devastating in its execution that there is no South African living today who is not touched by its legacy,” Ramaphosa said to loud applauds.

“I would even go on to say that to deny this, in my view, is treasonous.”