Quote of the week
It is clear that no legitimate objective is advanced by excluding domestic workers from COIDA. If anything, their exclusion has a significant stigmatising effect which entrenches patterns of disadvantage based on race, sex and gender…. In considering those who are most vulnerable or most in need, a court should take cognisance of those who fall at the intersection of compounded vulnerabilities due to intersecting oppression based on race, sex, gender, class and other grounds. To allow this form of state-sanctioned inequity goes against the values of our newly constituted society namely human dignity, the achievement of equality and ubuntu. To exclude this category of individuals from the social security scheme established by COIDA is manifestly unreasonable.
Mahlangu and Another v Minister of Labour and Others (CCT306/19) [2020] ZACC 24 (19 November 2020)
Hate speech on the internet
the constitutional definition of hate speech is very tight and that the context of the publication and the words used must be extreme and actively incite harm to be considered hate speech.
Of course, the definition of hate speech in the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair discrimination Act is much broader than in section 16(2). Nevertheless, the constitutional definition of hate speech is not nearly as broad as most people think.
Many people confuse hate speech with hurtful speech. It is not hate speech to be called racial names or to be called a “moffie“. What is required is something more, one needs utterances that “constitute incitement to cause harm” based on race, ethnicity, gender or religion. The harm that is to be incited does not have to constitute physical harm but it must at least constitute serious emotional harm.
And there must be “incitement”.
If one therefore merely says something hurtful to someone else, it will not constitute hate speech as defined in the Constitution. One has to say something that constitutes incitement to cause at least serious emotional harm to a person or a group.
