20150111_Dr Jack and Curtis

Ferial Haffajee, editor of City Press [via The Daily Vox]

I couldn’t believe it when the first reports started coming through. Imagine being in your newsroom and gunmen come in and mow down the entire team, including the editor. It seems almost surreal. Views [for media to tone down] are a call for censorship: you hear it across the world, you hear it in South Africa. If you don’t give cartoonists an even higher right to free expression than journalists or the rest of society then you take away an essential part of an open, democratic society. Cartoonists are always first in the line of fire because they’re our modern-day jokers – they speak unpalatable truth well before they become apparent.

The right to offend, provoke and poke fun is a declining currency, not only in the world, but also in our country. The right to not be offended [has been placed] above free expression and I think it’s about time we turn that wheel in the direction of expression again.

Charlie Hebdo’s work has made me profoundly uncomfortable. There is a lot of it that I find deeply offensive, but isn’t that what free expression is about? Otherwise, you end up being like a North Korea, a Singapore, a Vietnam or an Iran, where countries have chosen not to have free expression. Publications like Charlie Hebdo must exist to push the boundaries of free expression.