We are all familiar with Voltaire’s frequently cited saying about defending your opponent’s right to say even what you strongly disagree with your life. This is why I think Brett Murray’s picture, The Spear, should not have been vandalized even though I feel it distasteful and borders very closely to hate speech.
My understanding of hate speech is the use of words or symbols that are deliberately abusive and/or insulting and/or threatening and/or demeaning directed at those you disagree with, calculated to stir up hatred against and/or ridicule them.
Other’s think Murray’s picture is just a prank, or satire designed to make a moral point? I understand their point of view even though I disagree with it. After all obscene speech is not always offensive to all people because it depends on how you receive it, according to your lights, or the baggage you carry. But obscene speech pollute our intellectual environment, thus should be restricted in public space, especially when there’s a strong possibility it would breach the peace.
Liberal thinking (our Constitution leans more that way) tends to be overprotective of speech that causes harm to the freedom/dignity of minority groups but careless of it when directed to the majority, that is beyond the obvious rights of democracy.
For instance, were you at any given time and corner to conduct a survey about how South Africans feel about homosexuality, you would find that the majority are strongly against it and regard it as being abnormal. Our Constitution, rightfully so in my opinion, protects freedom of sexual orientation. But it can be argued that it does not protect the majority’s choice to feel offended by homosexuality as abnormal.
This is because in what in liberal or what is termed progressive thinking, homosexuality is regarded as being natural. Most Africans don’t think so even if, thankfully, most of them are not homophobes –save incidents of bigotry and violent intolerance against lesbians (which is more about ignorant bruised machismo than homophobia).
The point I’m trying to make is that freedom of choice in our Constitution does not take sufficient consideration of the majority rights to be protected from bullying tactics of a cunning minority, while it is extra sensitive and vigilant in the protection of those rights for the minority.
This is not necessary a bad think, especially when we consider the world history where the minorities have horribly suffered under the hand of the majority. But in South Africa the opposite has been the case. The majority has for far too long suffered under the hands of the minority, yet our Constitution acts as if the opposite is the case. Why?
The majority was never consulted in the drafting of our Constitution, while the minority had an inordinate influence on the process, and naturally were vigilant in guarding against the abuses by the majority. Thus you sometimes get this scenario where the so called freedom of expression of the supposedly enlightened minority diminishes to suppression the voice of the majority. This endangers public peace in the sense that a suppressed majority tend to resort to violence to make their point. Chaos ensues, and the minority are left dumbfounded as to what wrong has been committed.
Also, the minority group of this country, which is influential in intellectual and economic sense, has never bothered with trying to understand, accommodate or be sympathetic to the majority’s gestalt. They assume theirs is the more enlightened view, and expect the ‘savage’ majority to tow their line. This is a dangerous attitude coming from the sophisticated ignorance of liberalism.
Of course the Constitution is a living document designed to serve and influence our best values. But what happens when the majority loses respect for the Constitution because they feel it does not respect nor serve their values? Or that it is designed to undermine the gains of democracy? That’s a potential explosive situation.
The African American and the Advisory Counsel of the President of Ghana likes to say; “you are not an African because you are born in Africa, you are an African when Africa is born in you”. Africa has never been born into the majority minority of our country. This is the crutch of the matter that feeds the yawning gap that is drawn in racial lines in our country.
Having said that all of that, protecting people from offense, and protecting their dignity are two different things. The fact that members of the majority may be justifiably outraged by hate speech is not a sufficient justification for censorship. But as citizens in a civil society, we are entitled to be treated with respect in the choices we make. Such dignity is precisely what hate speech laws should protect.
The distinction between protecting from offense and protecting individual dignity parries the thrust of our Bill of Rights. The offensive character of a message does not provide an acceptable justification for official censorship. But it raises questions about the precise dimensions of the category of expression that would prohibit and how to decide cases on the border of that category.
For example, many among the minority group regard Murray’s painting as a critique of post 1994 ANC politics rather than a libel to the person of Jacob Zuma. The opposite is true for the majority. To me it is a question of judgment whether this is an attack on the ANC as well as an attack on the person of Jacob Zuma. But where there are fine lines like these to be drawn I prefer the law to generally stay on the liberal side of them.
Hence I’m against censorship in this case, and the unfortunate acts of intimidation even though I feel offended and outraged by the picture. So I’m with Voltaire on this one. I would protect with my life Murray’s rights to be distasteful and/or offensive so long as it does not fall into hate speech.
I would like to remind those who think it was correct to haul down the picture to maintain public peace that this only serves to encourage the bullies, and forms a dangerous precedent. Public order means more than just the absence of fighting: it includes the peaceful order of civil society and the dignitary order of people interacting with one another with mutual respect, and this includes the offended. Above all, it conveys a principle of inclusion and a rejection of the calumnies that tend to isolate and exclude not only vulnerable minorities but the voiceless majority also. We desperately need to learn to disagree without being disagreeable.
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