Hate crimes bill riles religious leaders

A group of religious leaders have banded together to oppose the hate crimes bill.

Thursday marked the last day for public submissions to the national council of provinces after the national assembly passed the bill in Parliament in March.

The leaders, through non-governmental organisation Freedom of Religion is SA (ForSA), filed their submissions to oppose the bill that seeks to criminalise hate speech and hate crimes in the country. 

They called for the bill to either be withdrawn or amended.

Limpopo-based pastor Strike Manganyi said: “Now, what will happen when your view respectfully differs with someone’s view on gender, marriage or sexuality and in the process you substantially hurt their feelings and you literally find yourself sitting in jail for eight years. It is on this concerns that I feel the bill is not clear on these very crucial issues and does not give clear guidelines.”

Manganyi said if he preached that in the beginning God created a man and a woman that could offend members of the LGBTQIA+ community and he could face a criminal prosecution for this.”

Manganyi forms part of a group of Limpopo church leaders, who have organised themselves as Polokwane United Pastors (PUP).

PUP chairperson Dr David Mulutsi said they filed their hate speech submission through ForSA two weeks ago.

Asked if their concerns related to church leaders being criminally prosecuted for preaching against the LGBTQIA+ community, as some churches did not recognise or acknowledge the community, Mulutsi said: “We don’t want to limit what we recognise and don’t recognise to individual cases and groups. Our priority is on the word of God. We’re first loyal to the word of God. It is difficult for me to say I want to do an act against the word of God. When the word of God says that this particular lifestyle; If the word of God says it’s wrong to sleep with another person’s wife I need to stick to the word of God.”

In the submission to parliament, ForSA executive director Michael Swain said they were concerned that the bill violated their constitutional rights as religious persons to express their religious beliefs without fear of punishment or persecution.

“Increasingly, around the world but also in SA, various holy scriptures (particularly on contentious issues) are regarded as ‘politically incorrect’ or ‘offensive’, allegedly causing emotional and/or social harm.”

Swain said he was opposed to the bill’s “wide” definition of harm and failure to define hatred, as well as definition and creation of the crime “hate speech”.

“I am concerned that the creation of the crime of ‘hate speech’ for saying / distributing something, which could possibly be construed as ‘harmful’, will have certain unintended consequences; namely, the criminalisation of good / well-meaning people who will be prosecuted for saying what they sincerely believe (according to their holy texts) and sent to jail,” he said.

Swain said there were already sufficient existing laws dealing with hate speech.

“For all of the above reasons, I strongly oppose this bill which I believe to be unconstitutional and unnecessary, and I ask for the scrapping of the ‘hate speech’ sections from the bill altogether.”

Director and head of pro bono practice at law firm Werksmans Attorneys Dakalo Singo said the most common criticism of the bill was that the provision dealing with hate speech was very broad, which is inconsistent with the principles of the rule of law.

“It was also argued that the proposed offence of hate speech will unjustifiably limit the constitutional right to freedom of expression.”

Singo said a major change in the bill was that moving forward people were going to be jailed for hate speech.

“If the bill was made law in its current form that meant the courts will have the final decision [on whether a person is guilty or not guilty],” said Singo.

sibanyonim@sowetan.co.za