BiblioPolit: Bill

Monday, August 17, 2020

The South African Film & Publication Act regulations are up for public comment until 17 August 2020 (today)

[The following comments were received from the ChristianView Network]

THE FILM & PUBLICATION ACT REGULATIONS ARE UP FOR PUBLIC COMMENT TO 17
AUGUST 2020 (today)

The Film and Publications Act Regulations, which may affect broadcasting and internet free speech rights. Part of the motivation of the Regulations we support, namely to reduce child pornography, revenge porn and the risk children are exposed to pornography on the internet. Preliminary comment is that the regulations attempt to regulate entire internet in a manner which appears to require anything published on the internet to first be rated by the Film and Publications Board (FPB)(unless it falls under the Advertising Standards Authority or the Press Council) or the company is registered with the FPB to do self-regulation. Either the internet will have to shut down or it won't be enforced most of the time. The broad hate speech definition copied from the Act is in conflict with the Supreme Court of Appeal Constitutional findings on the Qwelane case. We are still studying the regulations and have asked for an extension of time and clarification on its meaning.

https://www.fpb.org.za/about/legislation/

Please email the Minister of Communications Ms Stella Tembisa Ndabeni-Abrahams ministry@dtps.gov.za to ask for an extension of time for yourself and/or a general extension.

To send your comment on the regulations email clientsupport@fpb.org.za.

New South African Electoral Amendment Bill

South African politics have always been party politics, and not really whether those in parliament actually deserved to be there, or were accountable to anyone but the party they belonged to.

In simple terms, the South African system is a proportional system. That means that each party gets to allocate a proportional number of members of parliament (MPs) according to the percentage of votes it garnered in an election. If there are 162 positions for MPs, and party A got 23% of the vote and party B got 53%, then party A will get to put forward 37 of its members to be MPs and party B 86. This way, the voters will never know whether these MPs are really capable of doing the job, or whether they have a sense of accountability.