SACHS J of possession which is before us and I write to add my voice to the view that the right to privacy may be limited in certain circumstances. [108] SACHS J: Mr Justice Potter Stewart might have known obscenity when he saw it, but with respect, I do not, nor would I lay claim to any intuitive and immediate recognition of what is indecent. I am sure that the great majority of South African judicial officers, not to speak of police and prosecuting authorities, or of the general public, are in the same position. Far from the definition in the Act helping us, it amplifies the confusion by: introducing such vague concepts as manifesting licentiousness and lust; discriminating against same-sex activities; and permitting the penalization of possession of perhaps half the videos on sale in the most respectable of shops, and possibly three quarters of coffee-table art books, let alone many tastefully illustrated copies of the Bible or Shakespeare. [109] Yet, if the only defect in the Act was definitional overbreadth, it might have been possible to rescue something of it by appropriate definitional straitening. A well-trained judicial laser, coupled with a benevolent reading-down gaze, might have established a core residue of legitimately focussed state intervention in relation to the two protected interests well delineated by Mokgoro J and Didcott J in their respective judgments, namely, expression and privacy. [110] In my view, however, even more serious and less remediable than the definitional overbreadth, is what I would regard as the strategic overbreadth. All obscene material is in effect treated in the same blunt and undifferentiated way: its possession in any circumstances, and within any context, is made a criminal offence. The limited exemptions provided for are based on bureaucratic rather than constitutional controls. There is no attempt to distinguish, as has been 60

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