“F*** white people”: painting generates protest in South Africa

Dean Hutton.

Cape Town – The Cape Party intends to lay hate speech charges against artist Dean Hutton for his controversial artwork, it said on Friday.

“We will request the court to declare the offensive piece as hate speech (and to) order its removal from the public gallery,” party leader Jack Miller.

They intended submitting papers in the Cape Town Magistrate’s Court next Wednesday.

The art is presently on exhibition at the National Art Gallery in Cape Town. Several men, some wearing Cape Party T-shirts, past a sticker with the words “Love Thy Neighbour” over Hutton’s work, according to a video released on Thursday.

Miller said the poster was a blatant case of racist hate speech. He wanted Hutton to be fined R150 000, the same amount as racist Penny Sparrow, who compared black beachgoers in Durban to monkeys in January 2016.

Hutton’s artwork has the words “F*** white people” repeatedly printed in black and white over it.

Members of the Cape Party set the track “Love Your Neighbour” on the painting of Dean Hutton at the National Gallery.

Feeding hate

After coming to power in 1994, the African National Congress (ANC) did not implement universalist policies, preferring to establish racially based measures in access to employment and housing.

Organizations affiliated with the white and Coloured (mestizo) minorities, each representing about 10% of the population of South Africa, mostly speaking Afrikaans, have reported discrimination by the country’s black government. Chronic racial conflict has also been fueled by multiculturalist communist and neoliberal groups.