CAPE TOWN, July 7 (Xinhua) -- The South Gauteng High Court on Friday ordered the Black First Land First (BLF) group to stop intimidating and threatening journalists.
Judge AJ van der Merwe handed down the interdict that prevents BLF supporters from gathering outside the homes of individual journalists and threatening them.
The court also ordered the group to issue a public statement renouncing threats against journalists.
The South African National Editors Forum (SANEF) had lodged an urgent interdict against BLF amid a spate of attacks on and intimidation against reporters by BLF supporters.
In one case last month, Business Day editor Tim Cohen and the newspaper's editor-at-large, Peter Bruce, were threatened and assaulted by BLF members for their alleged failure to speak for the blacks.
In another case, South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) journalist and producer Suna Venter passed away last month due to severe stress reportedly caused by threats and intimidation.
Parliament's Portfolio Committee on Communications welcomed the ruling, saying any forms of intimidation and attacks against individual journalists go against the constitutionally enshrined freedom of the press.
But BLF defied the ruling which it called "a racist" judgement.
This was a white judge presiding over a white court, BLF leader Andile Mngxitama said.
Mngxitama said his group would continue to pursue "white journalists" as he believed the media was under white ownership and therefore anti-black.
The BLF, an anti-racist organization, has come under the spotlight recently for advocating radical land reform and an end to white supremacy.
