South African court gags ventriloquist and dummy

A court in South Africa has intervened to bring an end to a row between Afrikaans pop singer Steve Hofmeyr and a ventriloquist's dummy.

Hofmeyr obtained a court order banning comedian Conrad Koch and his puppet, Chester Missing, from criticising him on social media, Al Jazeera reports.

The order was issued after a row broke out on Twitter between Hofmeyr and the puppet over the singer’s comments about post-1994 South Africa, Eyewitness News said.

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The argument began when Hofmeyr tweeted to his 121,000 followers that the ruling African National Congress was prejudiced towards white South Africans.

In response, Chester Missing's Twitter account accused the singer of being racist. “It‘s like we are dealing with the racist version of Lord Voldemort from Harry Potter here: he who shall not be named”, a tweet from the puppet's twitter account said.

Koch, the ventriloquist behind Chester Missing, denied that his tweets could be considered hate speech. “[I] will be opposing them strongly, very strongly”, he said.

The comedian has also started a campaign calling on companies to end their contracts with Hofmeyr and urging South Africans to boycott any brands associated with him, Al Jazeera reports.

Koch, famous for making political statements about race and culture, said that the court order has impacted on his act. “It’s important that we talk about white privilege and apartheid, satire around politics, social identity and the nature of our economic system”, he said.