The Democratic Alliance (DA) has described an opposing affidavit by Free State African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) chairperson Thabo Meeko in the Equality Court to a hate speech case as "poor".

The DA shadow minister for higher education and training Wilmot James said Meeko's affidavit was "about as coherent" as his initial statement.

"Every one of the three points he raises are easily dismissed."

The DA laid charges against Meeko for hate speech and intimidation in the Equality Court in Cape Town after Meeko was quoted in the media as saying that University of the Free State rector Jonathan Jansen should be "shot and killed" because "he is a racist ".

Meeko's statement was made during the court appearance of four former Reitz resident students who made a racially offensive video, involving black campus workers in an initiation ceremony at the institution in a racial storm in 2008.

James said Meeko had challenged whether the DA had jurisdiction in the matter, secondly whether it had "locus standi" and thirdly, Meeko argued that he did not mean "shoot to kill" in the sense that it meant actually shooting and killing someone.

James said the DA had jurisdiction as the Equality Court allowed for a complaint to be lodged anywhere in the country.

The DA also had "locus standi" as the Equality Court Act provided for "any person acting as a member or in the interests of a group or class of persons and any person acting in the public interest" may file a complaint.

James said Meeko's affidavit was "poorly thought through", because in self-defeating fashion he cited the very clause in trying to invalidate the DA's complaint.

The DA said Meeko was saying in no uncertain terms that a particular kind of approach, the "shoot to kill" approach, should apply to Jansen.

"Meeko is, of course, entitled to defend himself ...but in denying the very nature of the statement attributed to him, he is actually denying basic common sense," James said in a statement.