IF apartheid has any beneficial heritage for the new society we are trying to create it is an abhorrence of social engineering. That is to say an abhorrence of those like Hendrik Verwoerd who — whether acting out of a sense of moral or intellectual superiority, or on private communications with the Almighty — attempt to organise the affairs of the individual according to their perception as to what is in their best interests.
It is in repudiation of that fatal temptation on the part of those enjoying power that this country has devised what is probably the most progressive constitution to be found in the world today. The charter of rights, in particular, is a ringing declaration of the rights of individuals to pursue their own lives in the manner they see fit, without interference from any who would claim to know better. The spirit of that charter brooks no qualification. What is sometimes held out to be a qualification — that it limits the rights of one individual to interfere in the rights of another individual — is in fact nothing more than a re-assertion of the rights of every individual to self-determination.
It is, therefore, with concern born of experience that we consider the latest attempt to formalise censorship in this country, by way of the “Films and Publications Bill”.
This piece of draft legislation holds itself out — as stated in a preamble — “to provide for the classification of certain films and publications … ” It is a statement which explains and circumscribes the mandate of the drafters. Their task was to create a service agency to advise the public as to the content of films and publications. This was to enable the individual to make an informed decision as to what she or he wants to see, or read — or to make such a decision on behalf of those, such as their children, for whom they are required to make such decisions in discharge of their duties as guardians. It was not, however, their mandate to determine what can and what cannot be seen, or read by adults.
The breach of that mandate is contained most obviously in Schedules 1 and 6 to the Bill which, read with other sections of the draft legislation, make it a criminal offence punishable by imprisonment to possess what is popularly known as “child porn” and to distribute material depicting bestiality as well as publications showing “explicit violent conduct concurrent with explicit sexual conduct” and “the explicit infliction, or explicit effect of extreme violence”.
The sexual exploitation of the innocence of children for the sexual gratification of adults is only to be condemned. The need for the criminalisation of “child porn” is founded in the effect it has on the children who are used to act or perform in the production of the material. In defence of children throughout the world, it can be argued its criminalisation should be given extra-territorial effect and that commercial exploitation of the abuse of children should be made an offence.
If child pornography is to be outlawed, however, it is the business of criminal law and the law enforcement agencies, not a classification board. If it is argued that exposure to such porn is likely to encourage paedophilia, we can only observe that, in that case, our would-be censors would have to submit themselves to incarceration lest their own perverse lusts be awakened by the discharge of their duties and visited upon our children.
This newspaper has no interest in defending bestiality, and we recognise that animal rights activists have forceful arguments to offer against the abuse of dumb animals in this and other respects. We only caution those who are not devoted to vegetarianism that, as ever where rights are concerned, the first that demands recognition is that to life. Again it is no business of a classification board.
Where violence and the conjunction of violence with sexual activity are concerned, the difficulties of definition under which those framing the Bill laboured are apparent from the over-indulgence in the word “explicit” — a term as implicitly broad as a piece of string is long. Violence and sexuality are integral to human affairs and their depiction cannot be subject to curtailment. If, as we suspect, those behind the Bill intend falling back on “snuff movies” to justify their interference, we can only point out that the right to life is already enshrined in our constitution and laws. If a genuine snuff movie were to be discovered in this country we have no doubt its origins and line of distribution would be properly and fiercely investigated by the police and — if necessary with the collaboration of foreign law-enforcement agencies and the help of extradition — the murderers and accomplices brought to book.
Apartheid, FW de Klerk once observed, was an experiment which failed. So is censorship. We have contempt for those who found it necessary in the first place to experiment. Those who failed to learn by the experiment are deserving of even stronger disparagement.