MOKGORO J speakers whose speech enjoys constitutional protection might refrain from speaking, for fear of having their speech deemed unlawful under an overbroad statute.92 As Justice Marshall, dissenting in Arnett v Kennedy, put it, [An overbroad law] hangs over [people’s] heads like a sword of Damocles [and] . . . the value of the sword of Damocles is that it hangs, not that it drops.93 [56] As discussed above, South African courts struggled for decades with the meaning of the phrase indecent or obscene, both as used in the 1967 Act and in various other contexts. The proscription in the 1967 Act takes the form of an open-ended nonexclusive listing, without clear outer parameters. I note also that, while section 2(2) of the Act provides for certain exemptions under the 1974 Act, the relevant provisions in that Act (section 5(4)(b)(iii) and (iv)), which made provision for exempting publications of a technical, scientific or professional nature or “of a bona fide religious character” were repealed by section 6(a) of the Publications Amendment Act 79 of 1977. The result is that as the two Acts now read, those exemptions are no longer available (although certain other exemptions, not here relevant, survive). [57] Prior to determining whether the challenged language is overbroad, we must properly construe its meaning. In so doing, we must read the text as a whole, assigning a meaning to every word and phrase, and not permitting any portion of the text to be rendered redundant. 94 Thus, the 92 Maryland v Joseph Munson, 467 U.S. 947, 956-57 (1984). 93 416 U.S. 134, 231 (1973). See also para. 80 & note 117, infra. 94 Attorney General, Transvaal v Additional Magistrate for Johannesburg 1924 AD 421, 436 (a statute “should be construed so that, if it can be prevented, no clause, sentence or word shall be superfluous, void, or insignificant”) (quoting R v Bishop of Oxford, [1879] 4 Q.B. 245 at 261); cf. Secretary for Inland Revenue v Somers Vine 1968 (2) SA 138 (AD) 156 (acknowledging non-redundancy as the “cardinal rule” of interpretation) (dicta); Du Plessis, The Interpretation of Statutes (1986) 129 (“If two different words are used in order to express apparently similar ideas or to refer to presumably similar phenomena, it may as a starting-point be 32