The South African parliament has passed new legislation broadly criminalizing “hate speech” [1] despite international warnings against it.
The new law imposes criminal penalties on broad categories of expression without clear definition of the subject matter, leading to potential prosecution and penalties for peaceful expression, according to the law firm ADF International.
The law states that any person who communicates with the intention to “be harmful or to incite harm” and to “promote or propagate hatred” is guilty of “hate speech”. Both “harm” and “hatred” are defined with vague and subjective criteria. The penalty for the offense is a fine and/or up to 5 years imprisonment.
South African national and human rights expert Dr. Georgia Du Plessis, Legal Officer with ADF, stated: “Our country has a complex and hard-won history of human rights protections, having endured vast and all-encompassing censorship efforts in our recent past under apartheid. This legislation violates international legal protections for free speech, and likely will lead to innumerable human rights abuses by censoring free speech, including peaceful expression, with criminal penalties.”