MOKGORO J South African courts, in a variety of contexts. In the case of R v Hardy, in which a newspaper was charged with common law public indecency for publishing a report tending to the “depravation of the morals of the people of Durban”, the court acknowledged that the offence was “not capable of very accurate definition.”23 Courts experienced similar difficulties interpreting the words indecent or obscene in the 1974 Act, section 47(2)(a) of which provides that a publication “shall be deemed to be undesirable if it or any part of it . . . is indecent or obscene”. In Mame Enterprises v Publications Control Board, the court remarked upon the difficulty in drawing the line between “that which is merely erotically stimulating” and that which is “subversive of morality”, holding that “[a]ll that one can try to do is to decide on which side of the line a particular case falls”.24 Williamson, J.A., dissenting in Publications Control Board v William Heinemann, Ltd, noted that the kind of determinations the Publications Act called upon a judge to make might often be contingent upon “the background, the character, the surroundings, the experiences and the beliefs of the individual Judge or Judges dealing with the matter.”25 Also dissenting,, Rumpff, J.A., candidly noted that, in the process of vetting publications under the criteria of the 1974 Act, “the subconscious inclination to equate one’s own sense of decency with that of the average modern reader is almost irresistible”.26 23 1905 26 NLR 165, 170. 24 1974 (4) SA 217 (W) 222F. 25 1965 (4) SA 137 (A) 163F. 26 Id. 161A. The phrase indecent or obscene has proven problematic in a variety of contexts. See, e.g., R v Griezel 1917 TPD 16; R v Meinert 1932 SWA 56, 60-61; R v Mcunu 1940 NPD 99, 100; S v H 1974 (3) SA 405 (T) 407-08. In S v Gordonia Printing & Publishing Co. (Pty) Ltd and Another 1962 (3) SA 51 (C) 53 , the Court did not attempt to determine the meaning of the words in section 2 of Act 31 of 1892 (C), which made the distribution of any “indecent or obscene” publication an offence, but simply accepted the interpretation articulated in R v Meinert, under which the phrase was interpreted to mean subversive of morality, or grossly offensive to common propriety.” In R v W 1953 (3) SA 52 (SWA) 55D, the court found to be indecent a figurine alleged by the defence to be a reproduction of the famous street fountain in Brussels, depicting a naked boy in the act of urination; the court noted that “[i]t is very likely that our people would regard as indecent what the people of Brussels are said to have tolerated for more than three hundred years.” 9