Motion to shut down Mpuma 'hate camp'
2012-02-29 22:41
Johannesburg - A motion to shut down Afrikaner survivalist group Kommandokorps' "hate camp" was adopted by the Mpumalanga provincial legislature, the province said on Wednesday.
The Democratic Alliance's motion was adopted on Tuesday, provincial spokesperson Lebona Mosia said.
"We support it [the motion] and agree that this thing must be shut down," he said.
DA provincial leader Anthony Benadie said the motion was "a decisive victory in the fight against racism".
"Mpumalanga provincial police commissioner, Lieutenant General Thulani Ntombela [has been] requested to use every legal means available to him to shut down the camp, pending a full investigation into what is happening there," Benadie said in a statement.
"The house condemns racism of all kinds, both in this house and elsewhere in our province. The continued existence of this camp must be regarded as an affront to our democratic order, and it must be stopped now."
The Mail & Guardian reported on Friday that the Kommandokorps' instructors taught boys as young as 13 that there was a race war in the country and that South Africa's black population was the enemy.
Following an infantry-style curriculum, the youths were lectured by camp leader Franz Jooste, 57, on racial differences, which included a claim that black people had a smaller cerebral cortex than whites and could not take the initiative or govern effectively.
He was quoted as saying that aside from the aborigines in Australia, the African black was the "most under-developed, barbaric member of the human race".
On Monday, Jooste denied the reports.
"No utterances of hate speech are ever made. Cadets are taught to love their own language, culture, traditions, religions and race. That is in the Constitution," he said in a statement.
Benadie said the training took place on a farm outside Carolina in Mpumalanga.
"It is not a permanent camp or militant base, and the owners of the farm hold no connection to the Kommandokorps," he said.
"While the DA motion is now a resolution of the legislature and must be implemented, the DA has already traced and interacted directly with the owners of the farm, and appealed to them not to allow further Kommandokorps training or activities to take place at their facilities."
- SAPA
