CENSORSHIP OR VIOLENCE?
The media: Paul Johnson
argues that South Africa is right to fight inflammation
WE ALL censor things we do not approve of but we do not call our actions cen- sorship. I exercise judgment; you suppress; he, she or it censors. Censorship is what the other fellow does. When Tory MPs protest against a proposed Channel 4 programme in which one Tony Harrison, described as `the Newcastle poet', makes abundant use of four-letter words, they are branded as would-be censors. According to the author, 'The language is an integral part of the poem. It is the language of the football hooligan and is seen and heard every day.' But all kinds of things are seen and heard every day in hooliganland. If another versifier were to make a compen- dium of the quotidian racial slurs scrawled and bawled in such quarters, we can be perfectly sure that Channel 4 would not dream of transmitting it.
There are different kinds of four-letter words, some sexual, some racial, and they tend to shock different groups of people. The prevailing wisdom in the media is that it is not merely OK but may even be commendable to shock Mrs Whitehouse and the millions for whom she undoubtedly speaks. But to shock the Race Relations Industry is wicked. To conjugate again: Tory MPs censor; Channel 4 executives promote racial harmony.
The chief object of the Race Relations Act, a form of legal censorship, is to prevent the use of words or images which may incite racial violence, especially among the white majority. Incitement to violence, even if unwitting, is nearly always a legitimate ground for interfering with the freedom of speech and the press. Human lives are more important than ratings or circulation figures. Are they more precious than truth? Yes, as a rule. I found myself pondering these matters last week in South Africa. I had gone there to give an address at the opening of a superb new gold- treatment plant at East Daggafontein. This hi-tech venture, which produces wealth from waste and provides much-needed jobs for people of all races, is the best possible kind of answer to those destruc- tive ideologues — well represented at the Commonwealth conference this week — who want to smash the South African economy and use millions of blacks as cheap cannon-fodder in an anti-white re- volution. However, while I was there I looked in at an excellent conference, orga- nised by the Johannesburg Star to mark its centenary, on 'Conflict and the Press', at which well-known journalists from all over the world met and, among other things, deplored censorship in South Africa. The government, which sent along a couple of ministers to put its case, was given a tremendous roasting.
The laws and regulations used to control the media in South Africa are innumer- able, complex and sometimes absurd. They are frequently applied in a ludicrous man- ner. I don't defend the way in which the censorship habitually works. But I am not at all sure I disagree with its intention. There are broadly two kinds of censorship: the censorship of ideas and opinions, and censorship to promote national security, both internal and external. Totalitarian states practise both but even democracies use the second to some degree; if they fail to do so, they do not remain democracies for long. Even those South African editors most vehement in their objections to the present censorship concede the need to protect national security. But what do we mean by 'security'? There is nothing less secure than a society torn by continual outbreaks of rioting, political murder, and bombs deliberately planted to kill and terrorise the public. The two primary duties of the state are to preserve its territorial integrity and the lives (and property) of its citizens. If censorship is permissable to secure the first, how can it be wrong to use it, when necessary, to protect the second? As the experience of the past quarter- century abundantly demonstrates, all Afri- can societies are extremely prone to vio- lence, especially in the sprawling cities which are now ubiquitous there. The conti- nent is entering the most acute phase of the demographic revolution: south of the Sahara the population, which was 415 million in 1985, is expected to reach 840 million by the year 2005 — more than doubling in a mere two decades. By that date, one in every five human beings under 20 years old will be African. The struggle to provide jobs for these countless hungry teenagers is going to be a nightmare even in the best conditions. South Africa is as exposed to this bleak prospect as any other sub-Saharan country: more so in some respects because black wages and living- standards are higher there, and so in consequence are black expectations. In other African states, mass unemployment is accepted as an inevitable fact of life but in South Africa, with its modern economy, it is treated as a 'problem' which govern- ment is expected to 'solve'.
At the same time, South Africa is being subjected to a phenomenon which has never before occurred in history: a co- ordinated effort, by virtually the whole of the rest of the world, to destroy the economic life of an independent peaceful country. The fact that this effort is half- hearted and ineffectual does not detract from the malice which inspires it, and the anger and nervousness it produces in South Africa itself. Moreover, it is accompanied by conscious attempts actually to promote violence there. So the most stringent pre- cautions are necessary to prevent large- scale political rioting in which thousands of young blacks would be killed. These pre- cautions obviously include control of in- flammatory material in the press and espe- cially on the television screen. In short, South African censorship has basically the same objective as the British Race Rela- tions Act — to prevent incitement to violence among the majority race. Cen- sorship is an alternative to black casualties.
In fact the wide-ranging ban on certain kinds of reporting which the government imposed in response to last year's troubles has unquestionably saved many lives. The rioting has gone off the boil, one hopes for a very long time. As stability and self- confidence return, it should be possible to relax the emergency measures, which will have justified themselves. In the mean- time, I do not feel that South Africa is a country living under the censorship of ideas. The fact that the Star conference took place is proof to the contrary. Free- dom of speech seemed pretty wide to me. Last week I was able to lambast the whole philosophy of the government, and predict its demise, in a public speech, and in press, radio and TV interviews, without a hint of interference from authority. I wish one could do that behind the Iron Curtain or, for that matter, in any other African state.
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