Political Perspective
PREJUDICE is still so disappointingly rife in our world. Still en route from the Unesco Press Freedom Day conference in San Jose, Costa Rica, aiming to make the world safe for journalists and others exercising their freedom of expression, I’m met with the news that the Swapo Party Youth League (SPYL) is at it again, fomenting hatred towards those who don’t conform to their notion of societal good.
AGAIN it renews in me the knowledge that the struggle today is essentially between those who strive for a rights-based world characterised by tolerance for what is different, and others who represent the dark forces of bigotry and real or incipient violence.
The right to free speech, guaranteed by our Constitution’s Bill of Rights, means that they can express their reactionary views, but the inherent meaning of this freedom is precisely in order to be able to speak out against prejudice and not to reinforce it.
The majority of journalists in harm’s way around the world are those who’ve spoken truth to power and politics and exposed corruption and wrongdoing. It is not popular to do so among undemocratic and autocratic regimes and other forces who would exploit and trample the rights of others.
In Namibia we fought against an evil regime, which shared the views today expressed by the likes of SPYL and their adherents. Apartheid denied the rights of gays and lesbians, because they did not confirm to their (biblically justified) ideology. To them homosexuality was a sin as much as any talk of racial equality. Hitler too hated black people, gays, Jews, Communists and anyone else who did not conform to his notion of a perfect Aryan race. And this, I am afraid to say, is the company SPYL is keeping when it vents in the way it does.
I believe SPYL must be brought to order. Job Amupanda calls on “those who are advocates of homosexuality to come out so we can see them”. Why else would he make this call if not to hound and harass and make of them pariahs in the eyes of the community.
Amupanda doesn’t have to like the concept of homosexuality, and he doesn’t have to be one himself. But he has to accept the rights of individuals to choose their own sexual preferences as long as these do not contravene the rights of others.
And like the UN Plan of Action on Journalist Safety and to guard against impunity, people’s rights and preferences need to be respected to ensure freedom of speech and expression, so too should others be protected from the consequences of intolerance simply for being different.
Amupanda is unfortunately right in one respect though. Namibia needs to ensure its laws be brought into concert with our Constitution in this regard, which is not the case at present. And hate speech and incitement is definitely not in conformity with the spirit of our Bill of Rights.
Amupanda would probably be the first to say freedom of press comes with responsibilities. He, and SPYL as a whole, should practice what they preach.