Whether by design or by default (government claims the latter), this is an egregious and malfeasant piece of legislation. It will remove a 45-year media exemption from the provisions of the Film and Publications Act and the censors of its allied Film and Publications board.
What does this mean? The bill provides that any content which is sexual in nature, which can be deemed incitement to war or defined as hate speech, will have to be passed by the Film and Publication¹s board of censors prior to publication.
We will not be able to broadcast and publish anything much at all. Take the news of the day. Top of the local news is the disinterment of bodies said to be those of the young victims of Gert van Rooyen, a paedophile.
Since government says this legislation is geared at removing details of sexual content (which may include sexual offence) from the media so that our young people will not be exposed to it, it is conceivable that all the articles, bulletins and current affairs rogrammes related to Van Rooyen would need to be passed by the censors.
Given the department of Home Affairs’ record of turnaround in churning out stock-standard passports and ID’s, it is no stretch of the imagination to suggest that they will not make decisions timeously and we will not be able to broadcast or publish. The Home Affairs department is sponsoring the legislation.
Take another story, which is leading the news today. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad has said that he will begin industrial strength uranium enrichment post-haste. For much of the West, this is incitement to war. We would, conceivably, have to pass these news pieces by the censors too.
If implemented as intended, the Film and Publications bill will mean curtains for us. The media has known this for some time and we have attempted to point this out to government by making as much noise as we know how.
We caught the attentions of Cabinet which prides itself on running a country in which media freedom is constitutionally guaranteed. In October last year, media owners and editors were invited to a meeting with the Minister in the Presidency Essop Pahad and Home Affairs minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula.
They said that any adverse impact on media freedom was unintended; that they wanted to curb child pornography but not free expression; that they believed we should have been consulted more substantively.
There was not a single journalist or media law specialist among the people who drew up the draft law (though it impacts on the fourth estate so fundamentally) and we hoped that a period of substantive negotiation would enable us to argue the principles and practicalities of our objections.
The bill’s parliamentary deliberation was delayed pending such negotiations.
It is now six months on and we have not been consulted on our funeral though we were promised front pew seats. It is a disappointing break of faith and trust. In May, the media will have to appear before parliament’s committee on Home Affairs (not one that is well-disposed to media freedom at all).
My guess is that all we may achieve is a reduction in sentence from death to life.
For its coverage of Travelgate and a sometimes relentless spotlight on the legislature, the media is not a beloved institution there.
If this legislation is passed, there is no doubt that a coalition of freedom of expression practitioners will test its constitutionality in the courts.
As Sanef chairperson, I will recommend to my fellow editors that we lead such a coalition. It is not in our DNA to lie down and die.
Ferial Haffajee is the editor of the weekly Mail & Guardian and the chairperson of the South African National Editors Forum.