ANTON HARBER: Media-muzzling colonial laws have no place in our democracy
09 December 2022 - 05:00
I was surprised to learn this week that a Mpumalanga journalist had been accused of criminal defamation.
Provincial police commissioner Lt-Gen Semakaleng Daphney Manamela applied for a restraining order to stop reporter Riot Hlatshwayo from committing acts of criminal defamation and what she repeatedly calls “crimean injuria”. The latter charge might be something more appropriate to level against Vladimir Putin, but the former makes use of an anachronistic law held over from colonial days that has no place in a constitutional democracy with a free media...
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