Kenny Kunene will appeal the judgment that found him guilty of hate speech after calling EFF leader Julius Malema a cockroach.

The high court in Johannesburg found the Patriotic Alliance (PA) deputy president Kunene guilty of hate speech when he referred to Malema as “a cockroach” and “a little frog” in November 2021.

The court ordered him to issue an unconditional public apology to Malema, which must include a retraction of the statement itself.

Judge Motsamai Makume said the statement uttered by Kunene when he referred to Malema as “a cockroach”, “little frog” and "criminal" “are hereby declared to constitute hate speech” as defined by the Equality Act.

Reacting to the judgment, Kunene said he had instructed his lawyers to appeal the ruling, which he felt was wrong.

“They will be pointing out that the judgment failed to not only consider the various arguments raised by my counsel in the matter, which in their opinion resulted in the incorrect outcome, but the judgment itself is at odds with the established case law.

“My lawyers strongly believe that another court will come to a different decision and therefore the appeal will be launched as a matter of urgency. Now is not the time to nitpick the judgment, but I’m sure that few people could ever have imagined that what I said about Julius Malema was so criminally horrendous as to be termed ‘hate speech’.

“It was truly rich of Malema to take me to the Equality Court when he so proudly sings ‘Kill the  boer, Kill the farmer’, which somehow isn’t hate speech. For me as a layman that is incitement to violence against a minority ethnic group. Malema spews violence out of his mouth, over and over. It was shameless of him to take me to court after calling Pravin Gordhan a ‘dog’ that must be kicked so that the master can come out,” Kunene said.

On Tuesday, EFF national spokesperson Sinawo Thambo welcomed the judgment, saying the party hoped it would serve the rehabilitating purpose that the prison system had clearly failed to achieve with Kunene as an individual.

“The comments made by Kunene clearly reveal the inadequacies of our correctional services system in rehabilitating individuals who are prone to criminality. Kunene is a case study for the failures of the correctional services system, and we hope this corrective judgment will assist him become a semblance of a respectable member of society,” Thambo said.