COSATU welcomes the National Assembly’s passage of the Prevention of Hate Crimes and Hate Speech Bill
15 March 2023
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) welcomes the National Assembly’s passage of the Prevention of Hate Crimes and Hate Speech Bill.
South Africa is still grappling with the legacies of apartheid and colonialism. Many South Africans are still bearing the pains and effects of the brutality meted out to them and their families by decades of enforced racism and hate crimes. We have witnessed all too often serious incidents of hate speech and hate crimes occuring in South Africa.
A few years ago a resident of KwaZulu-Natal was sentenced to prison for spewing racial hate speech on Facebook, a community in Centurion saw mobilisation against the establishment of a Mosque, white students have been found guilty at the University of the Free State for urinating in the food of African cleaning staff etc.
The experience of Rwanda during the 1994 genocide is testimony that hate crimes and hate speech cannot be taken lightly. Whilst hate speech at times may be dismissed as the utterances of idiots best ignored, they can as Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, Germany and countless other countries have shown lead to hate crimes, violence, murder and genocide.