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If the offending South African word was widely used during apartheid, it is now taboo. “In both societies, those two words resonate virtually the same way.” “The K-word here and the N-word in the States are essentially vehicles for expressing hate, a way of demeaning another person to make them less than what you are,” said Millard Arnold, 60, an American who has lived in South Africa for more than two decades and is a trustee of the Steve Biko Foundation, a community development organization. Even the most explosive slur would be considered hate speech under the act, but would not automatically be labeled such under the Constitution. The difficulty in defining hate speech is evident in the differences between the Constitution and the 2000 act, experts said. “Given our past, a lot more will be required than banning and criminalizing expressions.” “You cannot legislate for good human behavior you cannot legislate for social cohesion,” said Tusi Fokane, the executive director of the Freedom of Expression Institute, a private organization. The judge said the word “cannot be heard without flinching.”Ĭritics say that too broadly defining hate speech will erode freedom of expression and do little to heal the country’s racial wounds. Last month, a high court judge ordered a white man named Wayne Swanepoel to pay 100,000 rand, or about $7,000, for using the epithet against a black man during an argument. “Given our history, the people who drafted our Constitution assumed that although freedom of expression is very important, hate speech cannot under any circumstance serve any valuable purpose,” he said. Pierre de Vos, a constitutional scholar at the University of Cape Town, said the country was already “quite aggressive in targeting hate speech.” Momberg to the Equality Court, a body established in the post-apartheid era to deal with discrimination. The South African Human Rights Commission has said it will also take Ms. “If I have a gun I will shoot everybody,” she adds. I’m so sick of it.” She is also heard calling black people “opinionated,” “arrogant” and “useless.” Later in the video, she says that if she sees a black person, “I will drive him over.” “This happens all the time, all the time. She said she wanted to be helped by an official who was white, Indian or mixed race. Momberg, apparently angry at how long it took the police to respond, yelling that she did not want the assistance of a black officer. The video, which spread across the internet in South Africa, shows Ms. Momberg was caught in Johannesburg verbally abusing the black officers. In the United States, the First Amendment protects almost all expression, no matter how offensive. Under the proposed law, hate speech would be broadly defined as direct or electronic communication that “advocates hatred,” incites violence or causes contempt or ridicule.Ī first-time offender could be punished by up to three years in prison, and a repeat offender could face imprisonment of up to 10 years.īeyond the stiff penalties, critics say, the proposed law would also distract from the real problems in South Africa, where blacks have political power but where economic power and cultural influence remain disproportionately in the hands of whites, who account for only 9 percent of the population.īy adopting such a law, South Africa would join Britain, Canada, France, Germany and other countries where hate speech is a crime.īut it would move further away from the United States, a country with which it shares a history of racism by whites against blacks. Criminalizing hate speech, opponents say, would have a chilling effect on another hard-won victory: freedom of expression. The government’s move has ignited a fierce debate. “The recent racist utterances and many other incidents of vicious crimes perpetrated under the influence of racial hate, despite our efforts over the past two decades to build our new nation on these values, has necessitated further measures,” Justice Minister Michael Masutha said at a news conference on Monday.