De Lille vs the Web
Pity poor Herman Heunis. The CEO of MXit Lifestyle, which develops MXit, a cellphone messaging service used by millions of South Africans, constantly has to deal with allegations that the service is being used by people to peddle filth and prey on children.
The popular press regularly carries stories, sometimes sensationalised, about how children are exposed to pornographic material and propositioned by sexual predators while using MXit. More often than not, these reports are accompanied by calls from angry parents or indignant religious leaders to regulate MXit, or even ban it.
The latest person to call for government regulation is De Lille. The feisty politician provoked outrage earlier this month when she called on government to “urgently implement legislation to regulate MXit and Internet blogging, where members of the public can with impunity slander and defame individuals and organisations they do not like”.
The source of De Lille’s outrage was an anonymous blog post, to a website hosted offshore, by someone calling himself “SA male prostitute”, in which outrageous claims are made about Simon Grindrod, De Lille’s colleague in the Independent Democrats. The site also makes vile comments about other well-known South Africans, including a Sunday newspaper columnist and a popular Afrikaans singer.
De Lille says she is also “horrified” by “daily stories from people whose marriages have been destroyed and about children who are led into situations where they are molested by grown men, who use MXit to lure these girls and boys into their traps”.
She adds: “We are already struggling to repair the social fabric of our society, and to tolerate a platform for this kind of sexual predation and deviance against our young children is inexcusable.”
The mistake De Lille makes is blaming the technology for making the problem worse, whereas the problem is purely societal in nature. The platform is not at fault, as she suggests. “This has gone too far and it is time for government to intervene to protect our most vulnerable. The right to freedom of expression is not absolute.”
Her comments drew swift reaction from bloggers. Laurence Caromba of Commentary SA wrote: “De Lille doesn’t have anything useful to say about the Internet, but the episode has taught us a great deal about the sort of politician she would be in government. Simply put, she would be one those nanny-state busybodies who wants to regulate everything she sees, despite having only the vaguest understanding of what she’s restricting.”
Paul Jacobson of Wired Gecko wrote: “Never mind slanderous bloggers and tech-savvy paedophiles, De Lille represents a far greater threat to our democracy and our fundamental rights. If she gets her way here, we are heading right back to 1984.”
Caromba and Jacobson are right. If De Lille and Grindrod have a problem with content posted to the Web, they have the same recourse to the police and the courts as anyone else. If Grindrod believes he has been defamed, he can sue. The last thing that’s needed is new legislation that would result in increased censorship. This isn’t China.
The best strategy that De Lille could have employed would have been to keep quiet. By shouting about the offensive blog from the rooftops and calling for state regulation, all she has achieved is to send thousands of curious South Africans to the blog to read what all the fuss is about. If she’d just kept quiet, it’s likely that no-one would have paid it any attention.
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