LETTER: Speech prohibitions are a blunt tool

If Marguerite Stubbs is asking what is acceptable about chanting “kill the boer” or “shoot to kill”, my response is nothing at all. It is an expression of a toxic and debased politics, and adds nothing of value to public life.

Yet, we at the Institute of Race Relations maintain that prohibitions on speech are a blunt and hazardous tool. What is used against one speaker sets a precedent to be used against another; there is a real risk of incentivising such restrictions elsewhere. There is no shortage of appetite in SA for doing so.

The (controversial) American author Henry Louis Mencken once wrote: “The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.”

This is of course a political argument, not a legal one. But the EFF’s rhetoric is foremost intended to achieve political goals — sinister ones — and it is only on the political terrain that it will be defeated.

Terence Corrigan
Institute of Race Relations

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