Cape Town - Religious, political parties and civil society groups have made a last-ditch attempt to have the Hate Crimes and Hate Speech Bill amended and have said they were concerned about the bill’s broad definition of “harm” and failure to define “hate” or “hatred”.
The groups have been rallying support ahead of today’s deadline for submissions set by Parliament’s Select Committee on Security and Justice.
The government says the bill’s purpose was to address the increasing number of incidents involving hate crime and hate speech motivated by prejudice, and to assist victims.
During a parliamentary debate on the issue, MPs queried whether revolutionary songs and expressions in ancient scriptures would be affected.
Association of Christian Media chairperson Graeme Schnell said special interest groups had repeatedly misconstrued Christian teaching on sexuality and marriage as hate speech, and this discouraged discussion.
He said: “First preference is to scrap the bill, second preference to delete the ‘hate speech’ aspects of the bill, and third preference to mitigate the wording of the bill to reduce the risk of innocent people being punished or intimidated.”
Al Jama-ah MP Ganief Hendricks said the bill was a threat to political and religious freedom as the definition of hate speech was too broad and needed to be narrowed down.
“When you read the bill, you think it was drafted by a bull in a China shop,” he said.
ACDP MP Steven Swart welcomed a partial religious exemption that had been inserted in the bill, but said they were still concerned that the broad definitions would have a negative impact on constitutional freedoms.
AfriForum spokesperson Ernst van Zyl said the expansion of hate speech legislation was being done within a disturbing context of blatant double standards.
He said: “Symbols which contain no call to violence are declared hate speech, while open calls to violence like the ‘Kill the Boer’ chant are condoned, brushed off and allowed.”
Free Speech Union SA director Sara Gon said that instead, the government should bring the hate speech provisions in the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act into line with the Constitution.
mwangi.githahu@inl.co.za