AfriForum confronts government about blatant double standards in oral submission on Hate Speech Bill before Parliamentary Committee

The civil rights organisation AfriForum today presented an oral submission before the Select Committee on Security and Justice strongly opposing the proposed Prevention and Combating of Hate Crimes and Hate Speech Bill. AfriForum has also submitted written comments against this proposed Bill in 2019, 2021 and 2023, and did an oral presentation in 2022 outlining the organisation’s concerns about the bill. The bill is now once again open for public comment.

AfriForum is concerned about the worsening double standards that have taken root regarding hate speech when it comes to court verdicts, government application of legislation and media condemnation. This bill only creates further potential for these harmful double standards to be applied with greater prejudice and severity. These double standards have even made their way into previous deliberations on this very bill. In 2022 AfriForum condemned Deputy Justice Minister John Jeffery’s unacceptable comments and stereotyping of Afrikaners during the Portfolio Committee on Justice and Correctional Services’ meeting on the Prevention and Combating of Hate Crimes and Hate Speech Bill.

“Genuine hate speech is increasingly being condoned or even encouraged against groups like racial minorities, Afrikaners, or farmers, while speech which does not qualify as hate speech by constitutional standards is increasingly treated as hate speech if it serves certain political agendas,” says Ernst van Zyl, Head of Public Relations at AfriForum.

“Mr Jeffery commented during the 2022 public comment session that the ANC has ‘political objectives’ they wish to achieve with the bill, which is exactly why AfriForum opposes it. This bill opens the door for further abuses by the ANC, whereby it can simply criminalise speech that it hates, from those it wishes to silence, rather than tackle actual hate speech. Those are the likely political objectives Jeffery’s so blatantly admitted to,” Van Zyl concludes.