ANC to convene civil society workshop on criminal defamation
The African National Congress aims to canvass South Africans on their views on criminal defamation through an upcoming workshop by the party’s legal researchers, it said on Wednesday.
”This is a cooperative approach, and will not be the only initiative from here on. Our view is that we have a responsibility to promote discourse, whether we agree with one another or not,” ANC spokesman Keith Khoza said at a briefing on the party’s legal research unit’s workshop which would be held on Saturday in Johannesburg.
Krish Naidoo, head of the research group, said the idea was to get views from civil society organisations.
”The idea is to get the voices of civil society together with the ANC and come up with a composite approach, so that when we take it forward, it becomes a matter from all sectors of society and not only the ANC’s views,” Naidoo said.
He added that students, representatives from the SA National Editors Forum (SANEF), the Right2Know Campaign, and Media Monitoring Africa would be among those present at the workshop.
Sanef deputy chairman Moshoeshoe Monare said criminal defamation should be erased from the country’s laws.
”As SANEF we made it clear, especially after the Motsepe case, that we will work hard to ensure that criminal defamation is erased from our common law,” said Monare.
“It impairs and affects freedom of speech in that, whatever you write as a journalist, is not a question of someone suing you and you putting your case forward…but you are humiliated and arrested as a journalist, which I do not think belongs in the post-apartheid South Africa.”
Former Sowetan journalist Cecil Motsepe was convicted of criminal defamation in 2009 following a series of articles he wrote about Gauteng Magistrate Marius Serfontein.
According to Motsepe, Serfontein abused his position as a man of the law in order to protect a white friend with a history of assaulting black employees.
He alleged that Serfontein meted out lighter punishment to white accused persons, compared to blacks, even when they faced the same charges. Serfontein laid criminal defamation charges against the former reporter.
On appeal, the Pretoria High Court overturned his sentence in 2014, but maintained that criminal defamation was in line with the country’s Constitution.
Monare added that SANEF was pleased that the ANC had set a platform to engage South Africans on the matter.
”We were pleased when the ANC invited us to the workshop. Any measure, including approaching the Constitutional or the Law Reform Commission, to ensure criminal defamation is erased…,” said Monare.
“As journalists we do not want another Motsepe case where we are hauled before courts for something we wrote.
There are other platforms that can be used for remedial action. We express our intention to cooperate with the ANC and civil organisations on this matter.”