LETTER: Bill needs to cater for justified hatred

It is a racing certainty/foregone conclusion that the Prevention and Combating of Hate Speech and Hate Crimes Bill, which provides for a first-time offender to be jailed for up to three years, is never going to be used against a black person who allows their hatred of whites to get the better of them. Except perhaps in the most egregious of circumstances, and then only to administer a slap on the wrist similar to the one government official Velaphi Khumalo received for suggesting that whites be hacked to death like Jews.

Consequently, I suggest that we guard against being accused of double standards by renaming the bill the Prevention & Combating of Unjustified Hate Speech & Unjustified Hate Crimes Bill. In addition, we could perhaps insert a clause that alerts critics to the fact that blacks sometimes go into “a fit of uncontrollable rage” at the thought of what whites did to their ancestors and therefore cannot be held liable for what they say or do.

On a more serious/less sarcastic note, the primary purpose of the bill is almost certainly to intimidate people who might be tempted to argue (for instance) that blacks living in what is now SA in the early 19th century did not enjoy the same standard of living and quality of life as whites living in the Cape Colony, and that it is therefore unfair to blame all of today’s inequality on colonialism and apartheid.

Simply put, the bill is an attack on freedom of speech and should be consigned to the dustbin without further ado.

Terence Grant
Cape Town

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