SOUTH Africa’s governing African National Congress (ANC) has said it will push for tougher legislation to jail anyone guilty of “racial bigotry”, or “glorifying” apartheid. Black people could no longer be treated as “sub-
humans”, it said.

The nation has been gripped by a racism row after Penny Sparrow, an opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) member, on Facebook called black people “monkeys”. She denied she was a racist. The DA party suspended her membership.

The racially discriminatory apartheid system ended in South Africa in 1994. It had been introduced in 1948 by the then-white minority government and was later declared by the UN as a crime against humanity.

A spokesman for the ANC chief whip’s office, Moloto
Mothapo, told the BBC that current legislation was insufficient to tackle racism.

“We haven’t had a single person imprisoned for racism despite many instances of racism. We don’t believe it addresses the crime of racism,” he said.

A statement issued by the ANC parliamentary chief whip’s office said racial bigotry and apartheid should be considered a serious human rights violations punishable by imprisonment because of South Africa’s “painful past”.

“Elsewhere glorification of Nazism and denial of Holocaust is a crime and perpetrators are tried and sentenced to a prison term,” it added.
The ANC also said it had filed criminal charges against several DA members, including Ms Sparrow and MP Dianne Kohler Barnard.