The Africa Review in Five highlights African current affairs from a Christian perspective. Listen and subscribe through Youtube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.
Today is Tuesday, June 20th, A.D. 2023. This is The Africa Review in Five, written by Mark Christopher and presented by Yamikani Katunga
South African Hate Speech Bill
As we consider current events in light of a biblical worldview, much always captures our attention on any given day. One news item that has long been in the South African news and should be of concern to the Christian community at large is The Prevention and Combating Hate Crimes and Hate Speech Bill (Hate Speech Bill). This bill is close to completion and not far from being approved by parliament and signed by the president into law.
The primary problem with this Hate Speech bill is that its terms are overly broad and can be variously and subjectively interpreted to include mere disagreement with such issues as sexual orientation and gender identity. As a recent Businesstech article notes, “As it stands under the new laws, hate speech will be defined as a clear intention to be harmful or incite harm, or promote or propagate hatred based on these characteristics …” . Then the article details numerous characteristics to include sexual orientation and gender identity among various other characteristics. The punishment the bill prescribes for the guilty is up to 8 years imprisonment and or a fine.
In the estimation of advocate Mark Oppenheimer, the present Hate Speech Bill “is a return to the apartheid-era criminalization of speech. The bill controversy concerns not only its criminalization of speech but the wide scope of its hate speech prohibition.”
The way this bill is currently drafted, it is open to being abused in its interpretation. It is likely to be used to score political points or to punish those with whom one has an ideological disagreement. Merely holding the biblical position on human sexuality and gender distinction could, in the right circumstances, be deemed as “harmful” and or “hate”. There is already precedent for this in a ruling from October 2013 from the South African Human Rights Commission determining that religion is not an adequate defense against what they deem to be “hate speech”.
As one legal adviser explained in another article on the issue, “… the [South African] Constitution places very narrow limits on the right to free expression (section 16 of the Constitution), only prohibiting speech that amounts to propaganda for war (section 16(2)(a)); incitement of imminent violence (section 16(2)(b)); or ‘hate speech’, which is narrowly defined as the advocacy of hatred’ on certain grounds and which also ‘constitutes an incitement to cause harm’ (section 16(2)(c)).” The current Hate Speech Bill is a vast departure from the balanced provisions laid down in the Constitution.
While the Bible certainly condemns hate speech, false speech, and irresponsible speech, at the same time Christians are commanded in Ephesians 4:15 to “speak the truth in love”. A few verses later the Apostle Paul adds, “Therefore, laying aside falsehood, speak the truth each one of you to his neighbor …” (Ephesians 4:25). Among the biblical truths that the Christian is responsible to address are those related to sexual distortion of any kind and the distortions of the biological realities of gender distinction — male and female. While the SA Constitution supports the biblical injunction to speak the truth in love, the new Hate Speech Bill seeks to undermine the same.
In the final analysis, when a society claims to love freedom of speech and freedom of expression on the one hand while drafting hate speech bills on the other hand, that society is speaking out of both sides of its mouth. Throughout church history, Christians have been maligned, marginalized, and even persecuted for publicly espousing biblical beliefs from the gospel to God’s standards of righteousness. Daniel 6 is a classic example whereby Daniel was cast into the lion’s den violating the new regime’s own version of “hate speech” laws regarding praying.
It is God’s command for Christians everywhere to obey Him by speaking the truth of His word in love regardless of the consequences. Affirming people in their sin and confusion is the antithesis of biblical love. Yet, God never promises that boldly declaring the truth will be free from earthly or political consequences. So, let us speak the truth in love and commit the results to the Lord!
(For more information on the Hate Speech Bill and what you can do visit the ChristianView Network podcast)
Father’s Day
On another note, given that the world just celebrated Father’s Day, it is a reminder that fathers are not a nicety, they are a necessity. The nuclear family as God in His word defines it makes a godly father essential to the family, not incidental as our current culture insists. A recent article I came across cites numerous secular studies that underscore the Bible’s promotion of fatherhood as critical. Some in secular society are only discovering now what the Bible has promoted for thousands of years! Many biblical passages declare the nonnegotiable of godly fatherhood. Proverbs 4:1-2 is one such passage: “Hear, O Sons, the instruction of a father, and give attention that you may gain understanding, For I give you sound teaching; Do not abandon my instruction.”
In far too many instances today, Dad is AWOL in one of a myriad of ways and there is no instruction given in the home, so there is nothing to abandon. The sum of this equation is parental and childhood aimlessness. The effects of which are now all too apparent in our culture today. May God grant Christian fathers the courage of conviction to fulfill their God-ordained task as fathers.
And that’s it for The Africa Review in Five on this Tuesday, June 20th in the year of our Lord 2023. Subscribe to the Missionary Minds podcast on Spotify or Apple podcasts. I’m Yamikani Katunga. Be not weary in well-doing.