Puppet still tweeting Steve despite court order
Comedian and ventriloquist Conrad Koch continued to send tweets about Steve Hofmeyr on Thursday morning (06/11/2014), despite the Afrikaans singer securing an interim protection order against him.
“Haha. Stevo, I am gonna burn u for this one,” Koch tweeted, under the user-name of his puppet Chester Missing.
He was referring to a recent tweet by Hofmeyr that said, “The ANC created 'white' by creating a new victim based on skin colour post 94”.
Hofmeyr secured a court order in the Randburg Magistrate's Court on Wednesday against Koch to prevent his puppet from harassing the singer on Twitter.
The order prevents Koch from threatening, harassing, or making defamatory statements against Hofmeyr. He was also not allowed to tag him on social media websites like Twitter or mention him in television and radio interviews.
“My first court order against Conrad Koch (Chester Missing) succeeded and there are still four coming!” Hofmeyr wrote on Facebook on Wednesday.
Hofmeyr said that until Koch explained the “hate speech” in the Randburg Magistrate's Court onNovember 27, the ventriloquist was not allowed to contact him, his sponsors or his business partners directly or indirectly, reported Beeld newspaper.
“He can prepare himself for the same legal action from my partners and other sponsors. Playing God is for gods, not ventriloquist's old frog (Godspeel is vir gode, nie buiksprekers nie, ou padda.),” Hofmeyr wrote.
Hofmeyr asked people to inform him if Koch was still mentioning him or his sponsors and said that would form a new case.
Beeld reported on Thursday that Koch said he received a phone call about the court order but had not received the order.
He said it was “fundamentally” wrong to take legal action against a satirist.
“It's absolutely crazy. Steve spits racist bile. If he gets challenged, he acts supercilious,” Koch was quoted as saying.
“All I did was tweet. The price of his racism is coming back to him now.” Beeld reported that Koch said his tweets against Hofmeyr were not hate speech because he never said anything hateful about the singer or never told people to boycott his sponsors or the festival.
Supermarket group Pick n Pay and Land Rover found themselves the subject of a war on October 30, over whether they should be sponsoring an Afrikaans music festival at which Hofmeyr will perform.
This followed a column in The Times by Koch titled "Dear white supremacists..." in which he questioned the retailer and Land Rover sponsoring the "Afrikaans is Groot" festival.
Hofmeyr recently had a sponsored bakkie withdrawn by Williams Hunt in Port Elizabeth after he tweeted that in his opinion black people were the architects of apartheid.
Koch, known for his interviews with politicians using his puppet "Chester Missing" replied: "Have associated yourselves with an apartheid denialist. It gives his views credibility, @PicknPay: support Afrikaans music, not individuals".
Hofmeyr has previously created controversy by singing "Die Stem" at his shows.
The song was composed by poet CJ Langenhoven but is better known as the apartheid-era national anthem. A reworked excerpt was included in the new national anthem after the 1994 democratic elections.
On Thursday morning, Koch received support on Twitter from various people.
Former president Nelson Mandela's former personal assistant Zelda la Grange tweeted: “You part take in slander when it doesn't serve your agenda but you want to gag someone else @chestermissing plse rely on me as witness”.
Kay Sexwale tweeted: “Dear @steve_hofmeyr, you tweet racist tweets all the time - seemingly with pride. Why try to silence @chestermissing for calling you out?” Responding to a question about how someone takes a puppet to court on Thursday morning, Koch tweeted from the Chester Missing account: “You need to be a dummy….” Hofmeyr said Woolworths, SA Airways and etv were still sponsoring him and Koch tweeted: “Hey @WOOLWORTHS_SA, @flysaa and @etvSA is it true that you are sponsoring this racist apartheid denialist @steve_hofmeyr as he says u r?” - Sapa
