Nomaswazi Nkosi
PRETORIA: If you wouldn’t put it on a billboard, don’t let it exist on a digital platform, social media expert Emma Sadleir said of under-fire Judge Mabel Jansen.
Sadleir, a media law consultant, told the Pretoria News: “Screenshots have changed the game. Anything you say can be screengrabbed and sent anywhere. We have no control over digital platforms.”
Judge Jansen of the high court in Pretoria was exposed when Gillian Schutte reposted statements she made on Facebook in which she referred to rape as “black culture”.
The film-maker and activist revealed snippets of the conversation in which the judge said it was black men's culture to rape women, and that black men saw raping women and babies as a pastime.
Sadleir said people were saying things they shouldn't be saying on social media, and warned that anything wrong could become viral in an instant. “Once it's out there, it's out there,” she said.
Such was the case with Judge Jansen as the conversation she had, both in public and private, went viral on the weekend, a year after the conversation.
Sadleir said a person could take legal action, as everyone had a common law right to privacy. People also had to ensure they had a reasonable expectation to privacy. “However, the right to privacy is not an absolute right,” she said.
Sadlier said if something said in private was in the public interest or consent was given to publish it, then the privacy defence could be scrapped. “No one can doubt the public interest of this case (of Judge Jansen),” Sadlier said.
She said people had an ethical obligation to confront racism whenever it reared its ugly head. Social media was helping in that people's racist thoughts could now be exposed when they wrote them on their social networking sites, according to the expert.
Judge Jansen's comments have been widely condemned and calls made for her to be disbarred.
Judge Jansen has not been at work since the outcry. Acting Judge Louis Visser stood in for her, assisted by her clerk, in urgent matters that she was supposed to preside over yesterday.
The Judicial Service Commission, meanwhile, said it had received a complaint from advocate Vuyani Ngalwana against Judge Jansen, and urged the public to allow the process to run its course...