censorship?
Ann Eveleth
The Freedom of Expression Institute (FXI) this week slammed the new Film and Publications Amendment Act, which passed virtually unnoticed through Parliament and the National Council of Provinces on March 25, as an “effort to return the power of censorship to the government”.
FXI representative Laura Polecutt warned this week that the Act would reverse many of the freedom of expression gains secured through the existing Film and Publications Act, which had overturned decades of state censorship.
Most worrying, said Polecutt, was the expansion of the Act’s objectives from the regulation of distribution of material to regulate the “creation, production and possession” of certain material.
Polecutt said this had “extremely serious repercussions for artists and producers. What the Act will do is try to interfere in the creative process from the start. It will also give the authorities the right to search people’s homes.”
Polecutt said the inclusion in the new legislation of the term “pornography” could prove problematic.
“On the surface, its introduction in relation to children may seem innocent enough,” said Polecutt. But the Act now defines all material relating to children which can be banned as “child pornography”, therefore closing the debate on the term.
She pointed to the case of artist Mark Hipper, who faced a censorship battle when his Viscera exhibition opened at the Grahamstown Arts Festival last year. Hipper’s works comprised a series of charcoal portraits of a baby’s face and line studies of nude children.
The exhibition outraged Child Welfare and Women against Child Abuse, who dubbed it “pornographic”.
This led to a row between the Film and Publications Board chief executive, Dr Nana Makaula, and Deputy Minister of Home Affairs Lindiwe Sisulu.
Makaula visited Hipper’s exhibition and determined that the drawings were “bona fide artworks” and not pornography. But Sisulu said it was child pornography and should be banned.
An appeal was granted to hear the complaints, and Hipper’s works were cleared by the review board.
Polecutt said the Hipper fracas highlighted several problems with the new Act.
It paves the way for complaints to be lodged by the minister of home affairs or the public, while the draft Bill allowed artists and producers to appeal against negative decisions. Now, as in the dark days of apartheid, any person who is offended by a work of art can ask the state to censor it.
The Act also makes provision for the home affairs minister to appoint the Film and Publications Board and review board members whose task it will be to determine what is an offence under the Act.
Polecutt warns that this provision – which takes the appointments away from the president and his advisory panel – together with new requirements that the board members be judged “fit and proper” and “of good character”, puts greater power in the hands of the minister to set the tone for government censorship policy.
She said this was “worrying” in light of the pressure Sisulu brought to bear on Makaula over the Hipper case. Sisulu had not seen the work she wanted to ban.