Act on hate speech now; or risk sparking tinderbox of genocide

CALLING for race-based murder never ends well. Even if one feels they’re asking for it. This is a universal truth that doesn’t depend on who “they” are.

Vitriol has a habit of turning into genocide. It is a fire that spreads, inevitably, and that burns everyone and disfigures everyone. And so often, those who start these fires are far away and unaffected as they watch the bodies pile up.

In France, the establishment class, though distancing themselves from the National Front’s racist and sometimes violent rhetoric, has quietly absorbed and tolerated and tacitly encouraged it; today, their cars are the ones being set on fire. In our own country apartheid forces manipulated and co-opted Zulu/ IFP militia. The Trust Feeds and Boipatong massacres resulted. Rural Kwazulu-Natal was a killing field. Codesa failed. All South Africans were placed at risk of a catastrophe.

One need only think of Hitler’s hyperbole and the toxicity of Radio Rwanda to be reminded of how quickly vitriol can turn into genocide.

Preventing hate speech is not about protecting the privileged or the unprivileged. It is about protecting our society as a whole. Once we enter the realms of calling for murder, the question is always not about who’s right but who will be left if this is allowed to continue.

This piece is prompted, of course, by Andile Mngxitama’s announcement at a Black First, Land First rally that “for every black person, we will kill five white people, their wives, their children, their pets”. His agenda was well served by the reaction of outsiders. His party attained the publicity he desired; and the recognition of other political parties, press and organisations that condemned him.

The anarcho-comic character of Mngxitama was invented, promoted and instructed by now-insolvent British PR firm Bell Pottinger. It was paid by the Guptas to run a campaign to “exploit and create racial divisions in South Africa” (this is the description of the British Public Relations and Communications Association) to serve the Guptas’ financial interests. The fallout from this campaign is why Bell Pottinger is now insolvent. But the product it invented to sow division, Mngxitama, presses on. Whether he now has a new employer or is freelancing, his support grows.

Our Constitution does not protect expression that advocates racial hatred and constitutes incitement to harm. The Promotion of Equality Act (Pepuda) recognises the risk that advocating racial hatred poses to society in its prohibition on hate speech. It provides that no person may communicate words based on race against any person “that could reasonably be construed to demonstrate a clear intention to be hurtful (or) harmful”.

Mngxitama’s party has provided “context” for his incitement to murder. They always do. In his case, it was a perception of war being declared by “white minority capitalism”. One can be against white monopoly capitalism and race-based murder without needing too many intellectual contortions. I am. And I am also scared of where Mngxitama’s poisonous rhetoric ends.

Rafael Lemkin, who documented the genocide in Germany (and drafted the 1948 Genocide Convention), described genocide as a process. It starts with words that stigmatise and dehumanise intended victims. Lemkin’s biographer observed, rightly, that when the perceived “lesser horrors” occur, and there is no reaction, then when it gets to genocide it is too late.

By the time one recognises that all the criteria have been met, it is over. As South Africans we know all there is to know about racist expression and its effect. If our laws on hate speech carry any weight at all, now is the time that they need to be enforced. I am genuinely afraid of what a failure to act might mean.

Michael Donen SC is an advocate at the Cape Bar and a listed counsel of the International Criminal Court.