Karima Brown wins case against the EFF

Veteran journalist Karima Brown has won her case against the Economic Freedom Fighters and their leader Julius Malema after the high court ruled in her favour on Thursday morning.

The court found the EFF contravened the Electoral Code and must pay costs.

Brown said she had been “threatened with rape, with sexual assault, with violence” after Malema shared her cellphone number in a tweet earlier this year.

“I was called a ‘whore’ and told people will deal with me. That I must leave the country and ‘f**k off back to India’,” she continued.

Brown said many of those who had threatened her were “clearly EFF members”, adding that she did, however, suspect some of the threats were sent by bots (fake accounts) or by those tweeting under a false identity or from multiple accounts (sometimes known as “sockpuppets”).

The journalist, who currently hosts both eNCA’s The Fix and 702 and Cape Talk’s The Karima Brown Show as well as being a producer at eNCA, shared some of the worst threats she’d received with The Citizen.

They included one saying she must “step aside or we will crush your prolapsed vagina,” one calling her “sfebe” [Zulu for bitch], one which appeared to be from an EFF supporter telling fellow EFF supporters to “go attack” her, one calling her a “coloured bitch” and a particularly long, gruesome message that included the author threatening to “peel that skin off ur pink bodies” [sic].

Brown filed a case against the party and its leader prior to the elections and previously wanted the court to declare that Malema breached the electoral code.

She also wanted him to be issued with a formal warning, a fine of R100,000 to be ordered and a public apology within a day that the order is made.

This is a developing story and will be updated as details emerge.

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