The attack on Charlie Hebdo, and the slaughter of its journalists and cartoonists, is to be decried in the strongest terms.
The attack on Charlie Hebdo, and the slaughter of its journalists and cartoonists, is to be decried in the strongest terms.
The violence should be unacceptable for all concerned with building world peace and social justice.
However, although I believe in the value and critical importance of freedom of expression in order to build and defend democratic practice, I do not subscribe to the fundamentalist freedom of expression position.
Yes, we must have the ‘right’ to express our views, and in so doing be critical of the views and values of minorities, or the majority, or those in power.
However, the South African Constitution, unlike the American one, does not privilege freedom of expression above other rights. Significantly, the pre-amble to the Constitution urges us to ‘heal the differences of the past’.
The eminent South African legal scholar Johan van der Westhuizen reminds us that: The constitutional protection and limitation of freedom of expression has to be interpreted within the context of appreciating where our society comes from and where we want it to go. Today we strive for equality and freedom, openness, reconciliation, and tolerance, and aim to become a truly exemplary democracy in Africa and the world. In doing so we are conscious of a history of denial of these values, of race discrimination, sexism, and obsession with secrecy in the face of perceived onslaughts and state censorship aimed not only at preserving white minority rule, but also at enforcing the morality of a small group by the instrument of the law.
My South African experience and the local and international debates about the value and limits of freedom of expression have made me wary of defending freedom of expression without considering the context in which it is invoked. In a world of inequality, who has the power to have their views expressed?
is silenced? Who has the power to satirise others and their views? I am not knowledgeable about the French Constitution’s take on freedom of expression, but it troubles me when journalists justify their approach only on the basis of ‘French Law’.
Much has been written in the blogosphere about the attack on Charlie Hebdo, with many proclaiming, ‘Je suis Charlie’ (I am Charlie).
But I was most struck by American cartoonist Joe Sacco’s response, which appeared in the Guardian (theguardian.com, Friday 9 January).
He expressed his views in a cartoon, questioning the purpose of satire, and why it was that Islam is currently most focused on. He asks whether racist depictions of Africans and Jews would be acceptable forms of satirical representations, and more pressingly he suggests that “perhaps when we’re tired of holding up our middle finger we can try to think why the world is the way it is… and what it is about Muslims in this time and place that makes them unable to laugh off a mere image”.
What is the value of continually undermining particular groups of people and the values they hold?
Were the lives lost worth the point that was being made by the satirists? Have they added anything new to our understanding of contemporary politics?
* Professor Lynette Steenveld is a lecturer in the School of Journalism and Media Studies, Rhodes University
