Garry Hertzberg, practising attorney at Dewey Hertzberg Levy and Host of the Laws of Life with Garry Hertzberg on Cliffcentral.com writes:
A priest, a rabbi and an imam are talking … Whoops, I can’t say that anymore. How about Van der Merwe goes into … not that either. What do you call a blonde … careful now, we could get in trouble. Why suddenly do we have to watch what we say? The new Hate Bill has been released for public comment, if it is passed it will make you a criminal for telling jokes like this.
This Bill seeks to combat hate speech by making it a criminal act. The Bill proposes that any communication, including social media, spoken statements, pictures and gestures, that intentionally incite harm or advocate hatred, will be a crime. This is not a bad thing, inciting violence and propagating hate are despicable acts but the Bill may go too far. It goes further to say that anyone who procures or encourages any other person to commit so-called hate speech is also guilty of an offence.
This means that when your kid says, “Hey, tell that joke about the Irishman,” he’s guilty of an offence. What happens when you go to a comedy show, or a political rally, and one of the speakers makes a slightly off-colour joke and someone gets offended. I guess as per the wording of the Bill, everyone in the crowd who paid for a ticket would be guilty of an offence. It also says you can’t make communications that are insulting towards a profession, so saying something like ‘lawyers are liars’ would be hate speech according to this Bill.
This Bill will have the potential effect of censoring and making criminals of artists, newspaper journalists, political commentators, Julius Malema, you, and me. In our country, freedom of expression should be nurtured to allow issues to be raised, to allow people to talk. Limiting this right by statute is contrary to our Constitution and is a step backwards. English writer Evelyn Hall once said, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
