Recent media reports that have received international exposure have indicated that Deputy Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba is spearheading a bill, drafted and spurred on by the Justice Alliance of South Africa (Jasa) and its missionary director John Smyth, to effectively ban PC and mobile access to pornography in South Africa. The draft “bill” is available at Jasa’s website. This crusade is a dangerous threat to the freedom of the internet as a whole in this country, and a risk to our individual rights and liberties.
The Justice Alliance of South Africa (Jasa) calls itself a “coalition of corporations, individuals and churches committed to upholding and fighting for justice and the highest moral standards in South African society”. The notion of this “coalition” attempting to “uphold” and “fight” for “moral standards” in our society should augur pre-emptive warning bells in the eyes and ears of liberal-minded thinkers in the country. Does this organisation stand for the justice and morals of all South Africans, or simply for the interests of its members and evangelical partners? How does it determine “moral standards” and who says that others agree with its prescribed definition? What gives this organisation the right to say what is right for others and who gives it authority on matters of technology?
Jasa have published a proposed “bill” entitled the “Internet and Cellphone Pornography Bill” (there is also an accompanying document, entitled “A reasonable and justifiable limitation on Freedom of Expression and Right to Privacy” which I will not dwell on here). The draft “bill”, if you can call it that (set out to look very authentic as if it is about to be passed in the National Assembly), says of its purpose is “to make it illegal for internet and mobile phone service providers in the Republic of South Africa to distribute or permit to be distributed pornography, so as to ensure protection for children and women”. The crux of the bill is to enforce certain “obligations” on internet and mobile service providers with penalty of a fine or imprisonment. Part 2 of the “bill” states that:
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Any internet service provider or mobile phone service provider who distributes, or allows to be distributed through the internet or through a mobile phone in the Republic of South Africa, any pornography, shall be guilty of an offence and liable, upon conviction, to a fine or imprisonment for a period not exceeding five years, or to both a fine and such imprisonment.
This is a grossly naive, disingenuous and dangerous statement. It evokes a foul concoction of Luddism, technophobia, and fundamentalism. Liberal South Africans should be appalled at its crass naivety, ominous tones of censorship and evangelical nature. It is against all logic that the draft calls for punishment on the part of service providers who act as dumb pipes (or even smart pipes) to pornography. (Of course if it targeted viewers of pornography then every second male in the country would be packing his bags for jail). So at first blush it’s a blatant attack on internet and mobile service providers whose crime is to cater to the needs of their users. So much for Jasa claiming to represent “corporations”. Furthermore, it is virtually impossible, and commercially crippling, for service providers to censor all pornographic sites. It would mean that they would have to employ expensive server-side filtering software that would turn South Africa into a totalitarian state, a mini-China that filters sites both through inaccurate algorithms as well as the whims and fancies of the Film and Publications Board (which is supposed to act as registrar and regulator supreme). The web would be slowed down, as if it’s not slow enough in this country, and profit margins of the ISPs would be reduced, meaning — guess what — even higher internet costs for us consumers.
It is a grave violation of individual rights to prevent PC and mobile internet users from accessing sites that they so choose. It breaks the spirit and ethos of the internet, which more than anything promotes openness, freedom of ideas and freedom of choice. Parents play a far more important role in the protection of children than a government ever can. It is parents’ responsibility to protect children from potentially harmful websites. There are many excellent PC-side filters that parents can voluntarily choose to install if they wish to protect children from pornography. Many adult sites (which does not mean they are necessarily pornographic), willingly self-rate and censor themselves through RTA and the Internet Content Rating Association, and parental control software is even effective at fishing out sites that are not as self-willing. I somehow doubt that Mr Smyth and the Honourable Gigaba are even aware of this, as the bill certainly reveals an embarrassing lack of technical or practical understanding of the internet. Jasa’s supposed “consultation” (point 4 of the bill) with bodies and organisations (including a “consultation” with itself) is a farcical attempt at making the bill appear inclusive and diverse, when in fact it is completely impartial to fundamentalist and conservative groups. They have not even bothered to consult with one internet or technical organisation in South Africa, the most important being the Internet Service Providers’ Association of South Africa, perhaps because they know in their heart of hearts how technically and financially impractical the bill is.
Censorship begins with easy targets. Pornography is one such target: who is brave enough to stand up and speak out against restrictions on social taboos, even though they may be regular practice amongst web users (who have a right to privacy and every right to do as they please so long as they take responsibility for their actions)? It doesn’t require a countrywide blank-out of every potentially harmful site and a jail term or hefty fine for service providers catering to the needs of their customers. The South African internet does not require involuntary and extreme measures imposed by techno-dunces with closed mindsets and a narrowly exclusive definition of “morality”. Its users are perfectly capable of making their own voluntary decisions about morality, what protection their children need, and which sites to visit themselves. In any case, aren’t there more important ways for the government to protect children? Surely, for example, legislating that swimming pools have walls around them is significantly more important than legislating away pornography, if your sincere intent is to protect children that is. Surely there are far more real world and legitimate ways of protecting women as opposed to using the smokescreen of pornography to defocus South Africans from the real problems of this country. There are far more serious and mind-numbing issues for government ministers and missionaries such as Mr Smyth to focus on (see Mr Smyth’s personal site and note the irony of a missionary from Europe coming to Africa with the intent of forcing his morality upon the locals), and one sometimes wonders why there is a concerted campaign to divert society away from the core issues facing this country.
Let us not sit idly by and allow our government, or tendentious groups spurring it on, to erode our fiercely fought freedoms. It may seem fairly innocuous to ban pornography, but the disease of censorship always begins in areas in which we cannot find good and articulate reasons to disagree. Once it has festered there, and gained normative acceptance by the populace, it will move on to other targets. There are already rumblings of the amended Film and Publications Act being used as a license for arbitrary censorship of the media. Censorship, if not fought, will move on to media publications and websites with which the government disagrees, and will end with bans and restrictions on all spheres of our lives. Perhaps it is telling that, according to the “bill”, the only two adopters of similar legislation around the world are Yemen and the United Arab Emirates (with an unsubstantiated claim that Australia and New Zealand are looking into it). The former countries have a poor record with respect to human rights and freedom of speech. Does South Africa wish to follow their examples? Let us individuals, organisations and corporations fight for our individual liberties and the freedom of others, because there is no-one else that will.
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