HATE CRIMES BILL UPDATE

The National Assembly has passed a ‘B’ version of the Prevention & Combating of Hate Crimes & Hate Speech Bill, which has been sent to the NCOP for concurrence.

Tabled in 2018, the Bill’s overarching purpose is to ‘create the offences of hate crimes and hate speech and to put in place measures to prevent and combat these offences’. This is according to a memorandum on its objects, which among other things notes the state’s constitutional obligation to ‘respect, protect, promote and fulfil’ prescripts enshrined in South Africa’s Bill of Rights.

While freedom of expression is among these rights, it is ‘limited in that it does not extend to propaganda for war, incitement to imminent violence or advocacy of hatred … based on race, ethnicity, gender or religion, which constitutes incitement to cause harm’.

  • Prevention & Combating of Hate Crimes & Hate Speech Bill’s ‘B’ version
  • minutes of the National Assembly sitting at which the Bill was passed

Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch

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