Kate O'Regan, founding director of the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, discusses media freedom and free speech in South Africa, where she served as a judge of the Constitutional Court from 1994-2009.
O'Regan begins by looking at the history of South Africa and the oppression of speech in the apartheid era. After putting the country's present media environment into its historical context, she goes on to outline key provisions of the constitutional framework and examine three subject areas that have been brought up before the courts, namely the issue of media in the courts, law of defamation and libel, and hate speech. O'Regan concludes by noting that speech will always be contested in democracies. The fact that it is in South Africa is a good thing given the country's strong tradition of free speech and press freedom and the court's continuous effort to uphold those freedoms.