A few years ago Vicki Momberg launched into a racist rant as a black police officer attemtped to help her. Shockingly, the video went viral. For verbal racist abuse a South African court has given her a 3 year sentence, of which she will spend at least two in prison.
Via The Guardian:
In a ruling that lawyers believed to be the first prison term imposed in South Africa for verbal racial abuse, estate agent Vicki Momberg was sentenced to three years, with one year suspended, for directing offensive slurs at the officer. Previously people convicted of the same crime have been fined.
A video clip went viral following the incident in 2016 when the police officer tried to help Momberg after thieves broke into her car at night at a shopping centre.
It showed her saying she wanted to be helped by a white or ethnic Indian officer, and that black people were “plain and simple useless” and “they are clueless”.
In her rant, she several times called the policeman a “kaffir”, apartheid-era slang for a black person and one of the worst terms of hate speech in South Africa.
Momberg wiped away tears as judge Pravina Rugoonandan read the ruling in a Johannesburg court on Wednesday, finding her guilty on four counts. Momberg’s lawyer, Kevin Lawlor, said she would seek the right to appeal against her sentence.
The episode highlighted how 24 years after Nelson Mandela became South Africa’s first black president, espousing reconciliation, the country is still struggling with race relations.
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