Speech And Freedom Of Speech

The battle between freedom of speech and right to human dignity is a very sensitive topic because there doesn’t seem to be a correct answer. Both rights are very important but there is an extremely fine line between them and the issue comes in when that line is crossed and freedom of speech turns to hate speech and someone’s right to human dignity is affected. This has happened over and over throughout history but nothing has been done to prevent it.
Freedom of speech allows people to share and voice their opinions and morals as well as their political views freely and without resistance. Freedom of speech and freedom of press is necessary in a democratic environment and that is why it is required in South Africa. Everybody knows that we have the right to freedom of speech but people often take advantage of it and they cross the line of freedom of speech and they enter the category of hate speech. Hate speech is speech that insults or attacks an individual or group of people based on their religion, race, gender or any other factor. “If we conceal what we

Source C shows a cartoon produced by Zapiro about the Nkandla crisis, if there was no freedom of speech then the country would not know about how Zuma spent billions on his house rather than improving the country. Source D shows the strikes at Marikana and nobody would know about the brutalities that occurred if it wasn’t for freedom of speech. We can progress because we know the good and bad characteristics of our government and our president will think twice before doing anything bad because he knows the whole country, and possibly the whole world, will find out. These examples show that the media and freedom of media are required because they inform the masses about topics that we have the right to know about but would otherwise not hear