Connect with us

Strictly Personal

Beware George Orwell’s ‘Thought Police’ and ‘Ministry of Love’ By Daniela Ellerbeck

Published

on

The Constitution (in Section 15) expressly entrenches the “right to freedom of conscience, religion, thought, belief and opinion”. By explicitly protecting thought and, even, opinion the Constitution protects more than just formal religion.

Voicing our thoughts and opinions in the public realm are protected twice over by our Constitution – by the Section 15 right to religious freedom and the Section 16 right to freedom of expression (the latter expressly includes the “freedom to receive or impart information or ideas”). Evidently, enshrined rights make no sense if we were only entitled to them in the inner sanctum of our home and not in the public realm. It is, therefore, submitted that the crux of enshrining rights is ensuring they are protected in the public realm.

South Africa’s public life was never meant to be sanitised or secular, but a place where everyone can voice their beliefs, thoughts and opinions. This will obviously result in a multitude of diverse opinions in the public realm – should we silence some we don’t agree with? At this juncture, it is important to point out that the right to equality includes (and arguably its very crux is) the full enjoyment of all rights and freedoms equally by everyone – even those we disagree with.

Tolerance of views over silence

This will naturally result in a public realm that is full of diverse and pluralistic thoughts, opinions and beliefs. This will require us, as South Africans, to be tolerant of those we disagree with and allow them to express themselves in the same public realm we express ourselves in. We cannot relegate people to the margins of society because they do not or cannot conform to certain social norms.

Equality, after all, does not presuppose eliminating or suppressing difference, but equal concern and respect across differences. It requires us to act positively to accommodate those different to us.

So no, we should not silence those we disagree with. Rather, we should tolerate them. Tolerance is giving reasonable space to what we disagree with. In fact, the type of tolerance that is envisaged by the Bill of Rights does not mean we accept what is familiar and easily accommodated by us, but it is the type of tolerance that requires us to give reasonable space to what is unusual, bizarre or even threatening to us.

In other words, it is not tolerance when we find space in the public realm for people and practices with whom we feel comfortable, but when we accommodate those expressions that are (perhaps even extremely) uncomfortable to us to allow those people to also participate in the public realm. Requiring people and institutions to reasonably accommodate different worldviews to theirs in the public realm is part of celebrating diversity. This is the essence of being inclusive.

To ask for the public space to be sanitised so that you are never confronted by anything that you find offensive or even “unusual, bizarre or even threatening” is not tolerance, it is bigotry.

As so beautifully written by former Constitutional Court Justice Albie Sachs: “[i]ntolerance may come in many forms. At its most spectacular and destructive it involves the use of power to crush beliefs and practices considered alien and threatening” – what he termed as “aggressive targeting”.

No one is safe

This brings us to the Prevention and Combatting of Hate Crimes and Hate Speech Bill, which is currently in its final stages before Parliament – and also one of the most controversial pieces of legislation since the advent of South Africa’s democratic dispensation where we left our apartheid past – with its censorship, thought control and its imprisonment for speech it thought undermined the South Africa it wanted.

The bill proposes criminalising speech it sees as hate speech. The bill defines hate speech very broadly, including speech that undermines the social cohesion in South Africa (harkening back to apartheid) and that someone might think is hateful. Of all its numerous failures, the hate speech bill’s failure to define hate is perhaps the most ironic. It will also capture private expressions in its reach – i.e. you might face up to eight years in jail for a conversation that took place around your kitchen table.

The bill attempts to give some protection to the press and artists, but because of the bill’s wide definitions of harm or undefined hatred, these protections nullify themselves. No one is safe.

The problem with trying to silence viewpoints that we neither like nor want is that we simultaneously stifle the flow of information and ideas. Effectively, we hamstring our own freedom of thought, cutting ourselves off from the opportunity to learn, engage and challenge. This bill is therefore the antithesis of the foundational and fundamental principles upon which any democracy worthy of the name is built and sustained.

Like an atomic bomb, it will spare no floor of the building of public life from obliteration. Enter George Orwell’s “Ministry of Love”, exit our hard-won freedom.

– Daniela Ellerbeck is an attorney of the High Court of South Africa and heads up FOR SA’s legal department.

Strictly Personal

Road deaths are symbolic of our national failure, By Tee Ngugi

Published

on

“Killer roads claim 25 lives,” screamed the headline of the Daily Nation on March 18. Among this number were 11 Kenyatta University students, who died in a grisly road accident on the Nairobi- Mombasa highway.

The report gave chilling statistics on the ever-worsening road carnage. The 25 died in a span of three days. Between January and February 20, a staggering 649 people lost their lives on our roads.

What these statistics show is that we are well on our way to breaking the annual record of deaths on our roads.

Roads are deadlier

In a column in 2022, Kenyan roads are deadlier than some of the battlefields, I gave some comparative statistics to illustrate just how deadly our roads are.

I stated: “In 2021, more than 4,000 people lost their lives (in Kenya). By contrast, the UK, with a population of 65 million people and 32 million cars, recorded 1,400 deaths on the roads in 2021.

“In Germany, within a comparable period, about 2,500 people died on the roads in a population of 85 million people and 48 million cars.
“Thus, Kenya, with a population of 50 million people and only two million cars, registered more deaths on the roads.”

I went on to show that the deaths on our roads in 2021 were twice the number of American soldiers killed in Afghanistan in a 20-year period.

If these statistics are not enough to wake up our somnolent officials, then nothing ever will.

Not the avoidable deaths during droughts. Not the deaths caused by collapsing buildings. Not the sky-high cases of femicide.

Not the cry of millions who sleep hungry every day as officials fly around in helicopters. Not the alarming numbers of street families.
Not the despair of millions of unemployed youth. Not the squalor in our unplanned towns and cities.

Nothing will wake these officials. In any case, as the Daily Nation of March 19 on globe-trotting officials showed, when awake, our officials are travelling to the next European destination or, as the countless cases of theft being reported almost daily in all media show, they are busy lining their already saturated pockets.

Now, Kenya wants to send its police to Haiti to rein in marauding gangs that control most of the capital. Do our officials, or citizens, ever ask themselves how Haiti became what it is?

Cursed by God

Haiti is not cursed by God. It got that way because of systematic plunder by officials over the years.

It became what it is because of officials not performing their duties to required standards, and not being sanctioned for it.

It became that way because its officials love nothing more than to cavort in Paris or Miami, rather than think about how to transform the lives of their people.

Every day in our papers, we read about the conduct of our officials that mirrors the behaviour that led to Haiti becoming the broken country it is today.

Tee Ngugi is a Nairobi-based political commentator

Continue Reading

Strictly Personal

How patriarchy underpins gender violence today, By Tee Ngugi

Published

on

On January 27, Kenyan women flooded city streets to protest rising cases of femicide. These were the largest protests ever held against gender-based violence in the country.

The killings that triggered the outrage were especially horrific. In one instance, a woman was raped, beaten and forced to swallow acid. Another young woman was beheaded in airbnb establishment. In January alone, 14 women were killed in the country. Between 2016 –2024, 500 women were killed. The figures, horrendous as they are, are thought to be higher.

Statistics on gender-based violence paint a very sick society. Almost half of women in the country experience gender-based violence in their lifetime. Then countless others face daily sexual harassment in schools, public transportation, universities and workplaces.

Boda boda riders are notorious for harassing women drivers. In an incident that caused national shame, boda bodas descended on a hapless woman driver they accused of ramming one of them and physically and sexually assaulted her.

A few years ago, some self-appointed moral police would beat and undress women they deemed indecently dressed, as if in a country in which billions are stolen every year, and in which so many sleep hungry, the most egregious crime is a woman’s short skirt.

To be sure, femicide and physical and sexual violence against women is not a uniquely Kenyan problem. In South Africa, rape has reached crisis proportions. In eastern Congo and other war-ravaged regions in Africa, rape is a weapon of war.

The problem of rape also transcends race, culture and religion. In the United States and, surprisingly, liberal Sweden, rape is endemic. And in the so-called traditional societies of Lesotho and Swaziland, rape is a serious problem. In pious India, rape had become so rampant that it even happened in buses. The government, unlike other regions, moved with ferocity to stem the problem.

The Kenyan protesters called for tough legislation against gender-based violence as well as quick police action in response to cases of sexual harassment. These measures will go a long way in curbing the impunity that exists in the country about violence against women.

But, at the same time, we must seek to change deeply ingrained cultural attitudes. Even though we no longer live in the traditional society, residual traditional attitudes still stain our views of women. Therefore, we must explore ways of overcoming these cultural attitudes and making them a liability in society.

At the same time, we must rid our society of erroneous views such as there is a head of a family who lords it over the household and, instead, advocates a respectful partnership. Other erroneous beliefs consider domestic violence as not quite violence and rape within marriage as not quite rape.

Police stations also need to be sensitive to rape victims. Eradicating gender-based violence will, therefore, require uncompromising action at the levels of legislation, policing and culture.

Continue Reading

EDITOR’S PICK

VenturesNow58 mins ago

Kenya, Uganda settle oil import dispute

In an effort to patch things up between the two neighbours, Kenya will permit Uganda’s landlocked state oil company to...

VenturesNow8 hours ago

No plan to increase taxes, Nigeria’s revenue chief says

The head of Nigeria’s revenue agency, Zacch Adedeji, has reaffirmed that there is no plan for the introduction of new...

Metro9 hours ago

Tinubu vows justice for slain soldiers, bestows national honours on them during burial

President Bola Tinubu has once again reiterated that killers of 17 soldiers of the Nigerian Army in Delta State on...

VenturesNow23 hours ago

Nigeria’s central bank raises interest rate to 24.75% amid soaring inflation

Governor Olayemi Cardoso of Nigeria’s central bank has announced that the bank has increased its monetary policy rate by 200...

Musings From Abroad1 day ago

China, Zambia’s major creditor, cooperating on debt rework— Official

A spokesperson of Zambia’s foreign ministry has stated that one of its major creditors, China, has remained supportive of Zambia’s...

Sports1 day ago

Tragedy as coach killed, players injured in Sierra Leone club bus crash

One of the coaches of Sierra Leonean club, Port Authority FC, Lamine Bangoura, a former international, has been confirmed killed...

Tech1 day ago

Radisson Group targets 25 hotels in Morocco by 2030

The Radisson Hotel Group says it has set a goal of setting up 25 hotels in Morocco, which will expand...

Culture1 day ago

Moroccans celebrate ‘special towncrier’ who works only during Ramadan

Moroccans have continued to celebrate a “special towncrier” otherwise known as “Nafar”, who works only during the Ramadan period. The...

Metro1 day ago

Nigeria to begin seasonal reviews of oil firm’s plans on gas flaring

Nigeria’s Minister of State for Environment, Dr Iziaq Salako, has revealed that the government intends to begin seasonal reviews of...

Metro1 day ago

US earmarks $10m concessional loan to Zambian enterprises

About 260 Small and Medium Scale enterprises in Zambia will benefit from $10 million concessional loans by the United States...

Trending