Source: www.weekendpost.co.za

Jacques Keet

CONSTITUTIONAL Court precedents point to a likely ruling that the rights of children trump the peripheral rights to watch pornography, constitutional lawyer John Smyth said yesterday.

Smyth – the director of the Justice Alliance of South Africa (Jasa) – is responsible for a draft bill on blocking internet porn requested by Deputy Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba.

Addressing a Films and Publications Board symposium in Cape Town on what needs to be done to safeguard children from pornography, Smyth agreed with previous speakers that freedom of expression was an important right in every democracy. “The right to free speech and a free press for example are essential in any true democracy. Privacy is also an important right.”

On the other hand, there were two other very important rights – children and dignity.

A balancing exercise was required when rights conflicted and the Constitution had a built-in mechanism to deal with this in Section 36, stating no right was absolute and when there was a conflict of rights a limitation of rights was necessary.

“You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to deduce that the precedents we already have in the Constitutional Court would lead the court to say the rights of children and dignity must trump the peripheral rights to watch porn,” Smyth said.

The point had been reached in society where the internet and cellphones had made porn so available to children, and so difficult for parents to control them, even given that there were parents who wanted to protect their children, that the state should step in. “I was asked on TV yesterday whether this approach would not simply drive porn underground. My response is ‘the deeper the better’,” he said.

Smyth said blocking internet porn was undoubtedly technically possible. The cost was insignificant, but the best that could be achieved was an internet free of 85% or 90% of porn.


Unless otherwise stated, views expressed in this article are those of the author alone.





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