EDITOR - The recent article in The Zimbabwean on the speech by T. Dangarembwa refers. The arts and media may campaign for freedom of the press, or speech.
How can a lady want the removal of the censorship act? Has she even read them? She says that a law banning pornography is barbaric! Or violence! NO! Violence and pornography are barbaric. We are sorry if some of her materials do not conform to the norms of society, maybe she should peddle them in America or Denmark where they are more acceptable and the market is ready to lap up any trash.
The Censorship Act is there to protect our society from the negative influence of the few people who seek to destroy the goodness and fabric in society. Unfortunately, some will always attack what restrict what they term their freedom of expression. However, the freedom for one person to express themselves using the negativities of hate speech, violence, pornography and other anti-social deviations then breaks the freedom of society at large to not want to be influenced by these negatives.
One persons desire for freedom restricts many others. It is the same argument regarding theft if it is ok for one person to steal, it is certainly not ok for the person being stolen from. It is an infringement on the victims rights.
We must get away from the thinking that complete freedom to express these (societal negatives) does not have victims. It does, those who are exposed to it willingly or unwillingly.
It is not enough to say that the people exposed to it have a choice to accept or reject it. Firstly, the case of children who are our future that we want to protect and grow into a model society, with good family values, without the encumbrances of these social deviations.
They do not have the inbuilt ability yet to decide what to accept or reject as wrong, they absorb everything and accept it. They need parental guidance so that when they are older they can decide.
In the case of adults, we do not want to be exposed to half clad women on billboards or homosexuals cavorting in TV adverts or being offered pornography by vendors. These are things we would be unwillingly exposed to if the censorship act was removed. The majority say No! Liberation is not equal to liberality. We will not be victims of liberal ideologies.
Harare
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