Former estate agent, Vicki Momberg has been found guilty on all four counts of crimen injuria that she was charged with.
Judgement was delivered in the Randburg Magistrates’ Court on 3 November.
Momberg was caught on video last year uttering racist remarks to a black police officer at the scene where she had claimed to have been a smash-and-grab victim.
In June, the Equality Court found that her utterances constituted hate speech and ordered her to pay R100 000 in damages to the police officer who she called the k-word.
Handing down the judgement, Magistrate Pravina Rugoonandan told Momberg that the words she used on the day of the incident were racial and intentional. The four counts related to the racist utterances Momberg made during a 10111 call and also to the black police officer that was on the scene, trying to assist her.
During her cross-examination, Momberg told the court that she had received countless rape and death threats following the release of a video that went viral on which she was recorded uttering the racist remarks.
“I received a lot of death threats. People told me a truckload full of people are coming to my house,” Momberg told the court during her cross-examination.
State prosecutor, Yusuf Baba asked Momberg if she was racist and her response was that she previously had a lot of black clients, including one or two Indian clients. Baba told the accused that in the video, Momberg was trying to make everybody believe that she didn’t get assistance after falling victim to a crime. Baba also told her how she hardly gave the 10111 operator a chance to assist her, nor even the police officers at the scene.
In her defence, Momberg said she didn’t want any black person near her at the time as she had just been a smash-and-grab victim, allegedly at the hands of a black person.
Momberg conceded that her conduct was questionable on the day but maintained that the traumatic experience of almost being hijacked and the smash-and-grab incident had left her traumatised.
“I was not in a state to be logical. I was angry and just lashed out.” She claimed that she did not remember exactly what she said on the day.
Baba told the court that Momberg was caught on camera using the k-word 48 times but Momberg said she felt this was exaggerated. She also told the court that she doubted the credibility of the video and 10111 audio and believed they had been tampered with.
According to Momberg, the visuals on the video were not flowing and looked like photos stuck together.
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