Jon Qwelane guilty of hate speech

2011-05-31 10:30

Johannesburg - Former Sunday Sun columnist Jon Qwelane was found guilty of hate speech by the Johannesburg Equality Court on Tuesday.

The court found that a cartoon in his column amounted to hate speech, and that both his article and the cartoon propagated hatred and harm.

The article was published in the newspaper on July 20, 2008, under the headline: "Call me names, but gay is NOT okay".

Qwelane was ordered to make an unconditional apology to the gay and lesbian community, and pay R100 000 to the SA Human Rights Commission.

Qwelane is currently South Africa's ambassador to Uganda, where an anti-gay bill that would have imposed the death penalty for homosexual acts was recently shelved, following international condemnation.

- SAPA