[They do not mention the name of this website. But this is a good sign that other people out there, expatriate Whites, are doing their thing. Jan]

Black South Africans are considered “too dumb” to be anything and “have no right to live”. And former President FW de Klerk has been labelled a “criminal” and a “traitor” while former education minister Kader Asmal is considered an “utter gormless idiot”.

While most South Africans will be shocked by these comments, they come from South African expatriates advising foreigners against visiting this country.

These abusive comments, using extremely offensive racial terms, form part of a discussion board on a website about South Africa. Set up by someone called Gary Coetzee, it allows South African expatriates to communicate and keep in touch with their “homeland”.

It offers local news and information on culture, history, business and sport. The website has been in operation for the past five years and the forum consists of 35 pages of comments. And it even has a survival kit for those missing luxuries like Five Roses tea and Romany Creams for $50 (about R300).

‘Freedom of speech does not extend to hate speech’
However, there are some proud South Africans who are quick to retaliate and provide a counter-attack of comments. While surfing the Internet, Vanessa Hopkins of Windermere, Durban, accidentally stumbled across the website.

“I was disgusted. These people made racist comments that encouraged South Africans to leave the country to get away from the crime. I was looking for statistics when I did a Google search and came up with this website.

“I was horrified to find that some of the messages posted used derogatory terms and hate speech directed at black South Africans and South Africa as a whole.”

Jody Kollapen of the Human Rights Commission (HRC) says that the HRC did not condone hate speech despite recognising a person’s right to freedom of speech.

“Freedom of speech does not extend to hate speech and we as an organisation do not condone this. It is, however, important to bear in mind that people’s views are often regarded as a powerful type of advertising. If they are encouraging South Africans to leave the country, there is unfortunately nothing we can do.”

‘I believe we have turned the tide’
Moeketsi Mosola, the chief executive of South African Tourism, said there would always be people with different and destructive views. It was “rather unfortunate” that people were expressing racist views, but the bulk of people understood the importance of building a forward-looking country where they and their children could grow.

“Some people will be left behind,” he said. Mosola saw such comments from time to time, but said he was not about to send the writers off to prison. South African Tourism was working positively to develop stronger relations with people at home and abroad “to spread the good message” about the country.

“I believe we have turned the tide. More and more South Africans who used to describe themselves as ex-South Africans are now saying they are ‘South Africans living abroad’.

“They are extremely proud to be South Africans. They are overseas developing skills and can’t wait to come back home,” said Mosola.

Reinhardt Buys, author of Cyber Law @ SA: The Internet and the Law in South Africa, says that according to the constitution, the protection of free expression does not extend to “advocacy of hatred that is based on race, ethnicity, gender, religion and that constituted an incitement to cause harm”.

The distribution of hate speech is a criminal offence in terms of the Films and Publications Act 92 and is punishable by law. – Staff Reporters

This article was originally published on page 1 of Daily News on April 13, 2005

Source: Independent Online (IOL)
URL: http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click…/p>