CONSTITUTIONAL COMMENTARY AND EVENTS

Everyone cautioned that Finance Minister Tito Titus Mboweni would not have a lot of leeway in presenting his Budget for the coming year in Parliament. He did not flash big numbers around, but he definitely made an impact. He quoted from the Old Testament no less than three times, almost as if he realised that he would need supernatural powers for the job at hand.

As with the President’s State of the Nation, it is not sufficient to look at the numbers and the allocations and the commitments. There are few surprises. If one, however, reads between the lines, a different picture emerges.

On 15 February 2019, the FW de Klerk Foundation made a written submission on the Prevention and Combatting of Hate Crimes and Hate Speech Bill [B9-2018] (the Bill) to the Portfolio Committee on Justice and Correctional Services. The Bill essentially provides for the offences of hate speech and hate crimes. A person found guilty on a first offence of hate speech in terms of the Bill might be looking at imprisonment of three years, and five years on a subsequent conviction. 

The Foundation is not opposed to the statutory recognition of hate crimes, as there is a clear need to distinguish hate crimes from ordinary crimes so that proper data collection of these specific crimes can take place and it can be properly prosecuted. We are, however, highly concerned about the proposed statutory criminal offence of hate speech and we submitted that the current version – although an improved version of the 2016 version – is highly flawed and unconstitutional.