South Africa official calls for 'outright ban' on pornography

A South African government official is calling for the country to pursue a complete ban on pornography as a way to combat online child porn. On Tuesday, South Africa's Department of Home Affairs said it's developing an inter-departmental protocol to shield kids against child porn in time for the country hosting the 2010 World …

[Justin White]

Glass House, check...Throwing Stone, check

Once the ban is in place, someone needs to rush to Deputy Minister [sic] Malusi Gigaba's computer to confiscate all the hardcore child porn that he must be hiding (along with that video of two girls and a cup). It's a guarantee that this guy is so high and mighty about other people's "habits" and he must have one himself. Too many politicians, so little time.

Mines the one with "KEEP THE F*CK OUT" all over...

[Anonymous Coward]

Banana republic

How noble of this "Official" ...

Perhaps he should concentrate on a few rather more important aspects of South African society:

Worlds highest Aids infection rate

Worlds second highest Crime rate

40% unemployment, 3rd world Education system

Endemic Corruption at all levels of government

This is all very typical of the current South African "regime" - an attempt to try to follow the lead of other countries, because it sounds good and looks good on paper. They also continue to play the "rainbow nation, we beat apartheid card", 15 years after the event - and when things continue to go from bad to worse, lets play the blame game...

In the meantime, the real issues the country faces are swept under the carpet - but hey, the SA government reckons that internationally, it's being seen as progressive, championing international causes - so they've got 40% unemployment and the worlds biggest AIDS problem - big deal, lets ban all pornography, that'll sort everything out...

EPIC FAIL.

[Destroy All Monsters]

By all means...

....finally there are countries where you can tell people to go if one of their most repeated sentences is "...degrading to women..."

[Anonymous Coward]

Governmental (lack of) logic

"ban on pornography as a way to combat online child porn."

That should work about as well as a complete ban on children to combat online child porm.

[Anonymous Coward]

Polite applause

On the other hand with Stateside porn business in billions, trillions, gazillions there ain't no way one can imagine porn going away quietly (it will have to pump at best of times yes?)

In which case it might be better all round to categorise porn as "not public".

Meaning it is not accessible by "public" whomsoever "public" might be, or might be in some future sense (public ownership for example seems to give UK governments and (un)civil (un)servantry opportunity to fleece the "public" however many time it is deemed that the "public" is deemable as fleece worthy).

So, in the proverbial nurshell, it seems important to define "public" and "not public".

Therein lies the easy answer that many wish not to pursue?

[Chad H.]

Surely it would be more effective....

To ensure an outright ban on children instead?

I mean if there are no children, there can be no child porn, whereas the availability of regular porn can't effect directly effect the level of kiddie porn.

It's easier for dirty mags to be passed through the black Market than children, it's also harder to hide children if you're raided.

(all comments made in jest to highlight the absurdity of the situation).

[Steve Evans]

@Matt 89

"40% unemployment, 3rd world Education system

Endemic Corruption at all levels of government"

They're just following the model set by us in the UK!

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats ironic...

I believe there was a high profile South African politician that confessed to visiting one of the many "street children" for sexual favors recently. I believe he is still in office. I guess you can fuck 'em, but you can't download pictures of 'em.

[Graham Marsden]

Adult Porn != Child Porn...

Ho hum, yet another idiot conflating consensual adult pornography with that produced featuring children (who cannot, by law, consent).

Of course, like those who wrote the "Consultation" on our "Extreme Pornography" ban, he's just using "Won't Someone Think of the Children!" as an excuse to push his narrow minded agenda.

Meanwhile: Paging King Canute...

[John 62]

Someone has to classify the stuff...

Granted it's a pretty horrific job for the people who prosecute child porn offenders, but I think of the rush of applicants for job of classifying all the less cut and dried material. Makes you wonder if government officials ever think these things through.

[Anonymous Coward]

So Pieter-Dirk Uys was right...

The South African satirist Pieter-Dirk Uys has always made a joke about how the new South African government has given him the best material yet. Now, with this, they have even surpassed the Calvinist views of the apartheid government (which PDU used to relentlessly take the mickey out of).

I can't wait to see what he brews up out of this latest PR disaster from Africa's newest banana republic.

[MeRp]

So...

are they just doing this because of the Nigerians pimping all of the prawns out?

[Long Fei]

Sheesh

It's really past time when all Govt. people should be made to take a 'realism' test, an IT test and a 'am I a stupid bastard?' test before being allowed to make any announcement. Better still, before being allowed to run for office, although this would reduce the number of politicians by about 98%.

China's attempts are hardly wonderfully successful either. I can, er could (if I wanted ahem) access all sort of disgusting filth, should I wish. Not that I've tried you understand.

However, China will no doubt get around to the porn sites once it's finish blocking every blog and other innocent and harmless site known to man. (More on my blog: www.ChinarensBlog.com about my difficulties with that).

[Anonymous Coward]

@John 62

>Makes you wonder if government officials ever think these things through.

Being from the UK, I've never spent even a second wondering. The only wondering they might do is how many favourable column inches a policy might generate.

[Spoonguard]

A bold maneuver

Next they should try and make rape illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

Define Pornography

Title says it all.

[Thecowking]

@Merp

Probably also affecting cat food supplies across the cape. I can see why they'd do this.

[[e-mail]]

All this has happened before. All this will happen again.

Quotes concerning idiots, history and endlessly repeating mistakes spring to mind. Also, slegehammers and nuts as well.

[Nick Ryan]

Just ban sex...

Just ban sex... starting with this SA official. These kind of problems will start to resolve themselves soon enough.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe...

...they should concetrate on reducing the highest number of rapes per captia with amongst the lowest conviction rates going.

Women in South Africa have more chance of being raped than learning to read.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FSZ/is_5_28/ai_n18614355/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_violence_in_South_Africa

Maybe concentrate on fixing this before pissing around with minor laws.

[Paul 4]

@Steve Evans

You realy have no idea do you... If you realy think they UK is that bad I sugest you take your next holiday in Southern Africa. Almost any city will do. Go for a walk out of the "nice" areas. Just don't take any cash with you, or your phone, or camara, or come to think of it, shoes or good clothes. Any of these could cause you to end up dead in a ditch (I'm not joking about this). If you servive don't bother with the police. It will cost your more in bribes than it is worth to get a crime report from them.

[Anonymous Coward]

Business oppontunity

There must be some scope for the worldwide porn industry to lob a few satellites into GeoSync orbit and start offering free internet access as long as you sign up for a porn site or three. I'd love to see the Great Firewall trying to deal with that

[Anonymous Coward]

Mat89 did you cover the

huge problem they have with cheap chinese handguns? Couple that with some rich people and shedloads of people who have feck all. Thats why their gun crime stats are so poor.

I agree they should sort their own country out before lecturing everybody else.

[Dave Watts]

Announcement != Action

Governments are big on announcement (or pronouncement); implementation is not their problem or indeed priority, there might be negative reports when you actually do something.

On the other hand the RSA government recently implemented the catchily named RICA - where everyone must physically report to designated places and register their cellphone SIMs with proof of their ID and residential address. This, apparently, will reduce crime.

TPTB seem to have not noticed that making the use of an unregistered, or fraudently registered, cellphone illegal is not overly likely to deter your average crim: "Eish (South African for 'lawks-a-mercy'), this phone is incorrectly registered with the authorities and I have no idea how to arrange for a getaway car, I had better become law abiding citizen..."

[Anonymous Coward]

How about...

...banning all plastics, processed foods, cooked meat, sunlight etc as they all cause cancer. Ban all cars as they cause pollution, cows generate greenhouse gasses so ban them too...guns being fired releases toxins...diamond and gold mining also has a very bad impact on the environment so we'd best ban them too along with the fossil fuel and nuclear power generation.

Given that internet penetration (sorry couldn't resist!) is SA is relatively low (< 5%), yet rape - especially gang rape involving minors is intollerably high - and has been for longer than the internet has been around - it's hard to see where the justification for any ban is. More constructive would be two or three generations of socio-cultural adjustment and education to reduce the acceptability of violent crime coupled with better employment prospects and living conditions.

[WarrenG]

My negative fellow saffas...and sour poms

Yes I know it's easy to pull apart the faults of South Africa, let the world remember this fledgling democracy was on the verge of a civil melt down only 18 years ago, things aren't great but they could be a lot worse.

Have a look just up the road where the hand of the British Empire left another mark in Rhodesia or as we now call it Zimbabwe.

South Africa was one of the first countries to legalise homosexuality, promote the right's of women in Africa, full smoking ban in public places etc etc.

The constitution is very liberal but you must remember this is a direct reactionary antithesis of the old Apartheid regime

There is a painful transitionary period which is now occurring but there is also a lot of good with an emerging black middle class which can surely only lay the foundation for future generations.

Most importantly, the Springboks are No.1 :)

[Simon Buttress]

@WarrenG

Valid points about SA but still doesn't deflect this nutjob's idea from being just that, nutjob. Zimbabwe on the other hand was running well enough until Mugabe changed tack a few years ago and stuck his oar in with the idiotic farm reclamation, it may not have been perfect but it was a shiteload better than it is now and its downfall had f-all to do with us.

One last point, are you actually Snoop Dogg's cousin?

[WarrenG]

Yo Simon

All I can say is...

It's kinda easy

When you listen to the G`d up sound

A little bit of hip-hop

Will make the world go round

We got the sound for the rest

And it's easy to see

That this Too Phat and Warren G

[alan 39]

RE Governmental (lack of) logic

"ban on pornography as a way to combat online child porn."

That should work about as well as a complete ban on children to combat online child porm.

Actually you're wrong on that one. Banning porn wont do anything to combat child porn. Because child porn is (or at least should be) banned already. The crims will still keep making it. However if we ban children completely, there would be no children to abuse and hence it has worked 100% and thats guarenteed, if a bit extreme. But hey the are noisy little fuc*ers and keep me awake on the train in the morning, so its fine by me.

[Anonymous Coward]

Idiots

Where the fuck do all these hypocritical, narrow minded morons come from? And how do they get in power?

[Richard Wharram]

wtf

They'd do a lot better banning websites filled with AIDS-denialism.

[Winkypop]

When I were a lad...

...the only 'porn' available were old copies the National Geographic magazines.

All those topless African women... you hear me?

[The First Dave]

Littlewoods

Am I the only one that found certain sections of the Littlewoods catalogue to be quite exciting when I was about fourteen, and had nothing else? I take it that will be banned then, or whatever the equivalent is in Sunny SA.

[Jesse Dorland]

Good

I could care less of porn ban, but than again I don't trust any government when it comes respecting individual's freedom or right to express. Nontheless, I also believe that every nation has right to ban anything they feel not good for their citizen. Big brother doesn't have the right to police "democracy", and I like the idea of having few anti democratic rouge nation just for fun.

Personally, I'd be quite happy if underwear were banned in North America. Cops (hopefully not the usual suspects) demanding that we take our pants down, and proof we are innocent.

[Baying Lynch Mob]

Democracy

``Where the fuck do all these hypocritical, narrow minded morons come from? And how do they get in power?''

Same as in this country - they get into power when enough voters decide they can't be arsed to go out and vote.

[Chris 96]

to get to this fool's mental level

I would have to have my head smashed in with a blunt object!

His rationale is that to stop people doing something illegal you should make even more things illegal?

So how is that going to stop the crims (who are already commiting the crime) from commiting the crime?

For the sake of the civilised world, we need to ban these dopey wanker politicians who have no grasp of common sense and who think their hair-brained personal views should be imposed on their electorate.

Fuckfuckfucketyfuck they make me vomit!!!!

[James 125]

Deja Vu

Under the previous regime, (yes, the one responsible for Apartheid) porn was banned all the way up until around 1992, when in a massive explosion of deregulation the primary girlie-mag of the time, the venerable "Scope" magazine was permitted to publish pictures of women with "scratch off stars" covering their breasts.

Of course the moral rot only truly set in with the publication of LosLyf (afrikaans txln: Loose body) - I mean, this was porn with subtitles in Afrikaans ! (which somehow was worse ?)

So rapid the interest loss in tame fare, that Playboy South Africa (centre) folded by 1995 and only the hard-core mags remained, serving their small (in number) but loyal constituents.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" - George Santayana

Aaah, the good times.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dickhead

Unbelievable, but then again.

I wonder if he's from the same womb as those Aussie cops who recently gave a dog tied to a post a parking ticket (I aint kidding..)

Stupidity is rampant - and its freaklin' well heart-breaking :(

[Spleen]

Ballsy, in a very very stupid kind of way

It takes a certain amount of cojones to stand up in a supposedly democratic, liberal country, and say you're going to emulate China.

If it catches on us commentards would be out of a pasttime. We often like to draw comparisons between a policy being proposed now and a similar policy that worked very badly in the past - but what's the point if politicians start doing it for us? "We're going to make everyone in the country carry ID cards. Yes, just like Hitler."