VideoIn racist rant at black policeman, white South African Vicki Momberg used ‘k-word’ 48 times. Now she’s going to jail
The landmark sentence is believed to be the first jail term handed down for verbal racial abuse in South Africa
A South African court has jailed a white woman for yelling racist abuse at a black policeman, in a case that laid bare attitudes that endure more than two decades after the end of apartheid.
In a ruling on Wednesday 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 deeply 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 policeman 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, clueless”.
In her rant, she repeatedly called the policeman a “kaffir”, apartheid-era slang for a black person and one of the worst terms of hate speech in South Africa. She used the slur, which is so toxic it is often referred to in South Africa as “the k-word”, 48 times in total.