donovan

I hate to admit it, but you have a point. Call me unprincipled but watching Malema get a spank is just too satisfying.

Terrence

“Once you start making a list of what can or cannot be said in public that goes beyond the definition of race hate” – why is race hate so much worse than gender hate? By your logic, there’s nothing wrong with the sewerage that Hitler spewed – because that was religious hate, not race hate (thin line but anyway…)
The right to freedom of speech doesn’t come for free, it implies a responsibility – as do all rights – and hate speech of any form is an abnegation of that responsibility, so it would follow that the right should then be surrendered too.

nicci

I think Malema says a whole lot…in the case of raped women or violence though, I think perhaps there should be some limits. Rwanda showed how language has the power to incite violence. At the same time, the media has a lot of responsibility for giving Malema a voice and creating a monster.

Jonn

But if a white student from some previously white university should say something similar about black people i.e. exercise his or right to “free expression” there will be an international outcry, as there has been already.

You are a bigot. Mr Hartly

Eli Jikelele

Sorry Ray, but you are either being really naive and stupid or you are trying to create a reason for people to increase the traffic on your blogsite.

David Bullard

Odd that you didn’t hold this view two years ago when I was sacked from the ST. Interesting that the HRC didn’t take any action against me and I never even made it to the Equality Court. Double standards? No….just tall popy syndrome.

David Bullard

Odd that you didn’t hold this view two years ago when I was sacked from the ST. Interesting that the HRC didn’t take any action against me and I never even made it to the Equality Court. Double standards? No….just tall poppy syndrome.

Phillip de Wet

Bullshit. Read the judgment. The court found that his statement could bring direct, physical harm to women. By creating or perpetuating the idea that a woman who is submissive after the fact could not have been raped, or implying that explicit consent is not required before ***, or both.

Before that finding it checked on generality, truthfulness, impact, reach and other requirements.

What Malema said isn’t libel. It may not be defamation, not in law. But it most bloody definitely isn’t something we can accept as a society.

This is the ideal application of a law that plugs a hole, where speech that would never be allowed if applied to an individual is okay if it deals in generalities. The only potential problem is that the test for hate speech is so much more strict than defamation – but then that serves to protect free speech.

Phillip de Wet

Wow. You talk about free speech but your comment system beeps out “***”. Sexual intercourse. Congress of a physical nature. S. E. X.

Larry Goodfella

Spot on David Bullard. Make that tall ‘white’ poppy syndrome.

Thanks to you, I no longer waste money on the Sunday Times (two years now is it – R1300 saved). Read for free online. Thanks.

Marvin Caldwell-Barr

On this one I tend to agree with you, Ray. Malema’s remarks were insulting, even defamatory, but to call it hate speech is perhaps stretching things a bit far.

Granted the lady had to flee the country, but that was because of emotions stirred up during the court case.

Malema’s singing of the “kill the Boer” song, however, is an entirely different matter. That, regardless of what Gwede Mantashe and Jacob Zuma would have us believe, was incitement to violence, and needs to be dealt with by the Equality Court.

blakat

And crimen injuria? Do we erase that as well?

Marvin Caldwell-Barr

“Leading constitutional law expert and Claude Leon Foundation Chair in Constitutional Governance at the University of Cape Town, Professor Pierre de Vos”, believes the judgement of the Equality Court in this case is wrong, and could be overturned on appeal.

http://constitutionallyspeakin.....-is-wrong/

TheOne

It’s not what he says, but the way he say things, he actually means to say the nastiest, ugliest, racist and sexists things in anger. Freedom of speech is one thing, but this is not freedom of speech, it is freedom of spreading hatred and other typical malema propaganda.