4 ms·
The only saving grace is that the Department of Home Affairs (of which the Film and Publications Board is part) is so incompetent that their reach exceeds their
by buyx 11y ago
The only saving grace is that the Department of Home Affairs (of which the Film and Publications Board is part) is so incompetent that their reach exceeds their grasp, and it is relatively easy to circumvent their authoritarian tendencies.
Until recently many South African Apple device owners had Kenya accounts to buy games (including most educational content) because of the Board's refusal to allow South African App Store games without rating every game itself (eventually they relented).
Home Affairs, which also handles citizenship and immigration, is a mess, and has made the South African passport worthless thanks to rampant corruption and incompetence (historically anyway- corruption may be improving a bit, but the damage is done).
Their latest trick: to require burdensome documentation from international travelers with children ostensibly to combat child trafficking (because of by dubious data from a lobby group that caught a Minister's ear). It's expected to severely dent the Sputh African tourism industry.
TlDr: Even if these proposed censorship regulations come to pass, it is unlikely that they will have much of an effect thanks to the incompetence of the would-be censors.
- peferron 11y agoIn the short term you are right. However the legal authority to enforce censorship will be established. All it will take is for the Department of Home Affairs to become less incompetent and suddenly things will become very serious. I think history has shown us that it's rarely a good idea to assume that people will remain incompetent, that puppet dictators will remain puppets, etc.
- jorangreef 11y agoAs a South African, the department of Home Affairs in the Western Cape is actually doing an excellent job regarding birth certificates, passports, ids etc. The bottleneck is in Gauteng.
- buyx 11y agoAs I intimated, things are improving in some areas thanks to improved IT system controls, but the quality of the improvement is very very uneven. Even in Gauteng, some offices function excellently, while others are awful. It comes down to the individual branch managers. There still are huge bottlenecks in dealing with "refugee" claims, and with the legal immigration processes, and the legacy of past corruption (last 25 years) is still haunting South Africa. Based on overall performance, I think "incompetent" is still a fair characterisation.
- spitcode 11y agoIt really does not matter how well the try to enforce this law if they have the power to do so we have a serious problem