A cup o' kindness yet, for auld lang syne?

Good tidings we bring, to you and your kin. In South Africa, however, the holiday season seems to bring out the worst in people.

Racism has reared its ugly head again, with more all-too-familiar "They're going to the beach again" outbursts. "They", of course, meaning black people.

This time last year, Penny Sparrow became a household name. It was a sign of things to come.

Others soon followed, such as Velaphi Khumalo, who wrote on Facebook: "I want to clean this country of all white people. We must act as Hitler did to the Jews."

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These were just two sad episodes among a rash of slurs, which raised hard questions about the commitment to tolerance, reconciliation and nation-building.

Looking back, 2016 will be viewed by many as a year of racism, prejudice and stereotyping.

So where are we now?

A court found Sparrow guilty of hate speech. She was ordered to pay R150,000 to a charity that promotes cultural and heritage issues within 60 days, and was interdicted from further hate speech.

The Constitutional Court, in a recent case after a South African Revenue Service employee had called his manager a k*****, held that the seriousness of racist remarks cannot be overlooked by the courts in a country still fighting the scourge of racism as the use of the k-word had great historical significance in South Africa and previously was used to dehumanise black people.

Said the court: "Calling an African a 'kaffir' 13 years deep into our constitutional democracy ... does in itself make a compelling case for all of us to begin to engage in an earnest and ongoing dialogue in pursuit of strategies for a lasting solution to the bane of our peaceful co-existence that racism has continued to be. The duty to eradicate racism and its tendencies has become all the more apparent, essential and urgent now."

One such strategy is contained in the new Prevention and Combating of Hate Crimes and Hate Speech Bill. The bill creates the offences of hate crimes and hate speech and seeks to put in place measures to prevent and combat these offences.

Laws against hate speech serve a dual purpose. They protect the rights of the victim and the target group, and ensure that society is informed that hate speech is neither tolerated nor sanctioned.

The bill provides that any person who by any means whatsoever, in public, intentionally advocates hatred of any other person, or group of persons, based on certain grounds - race, gender, sex, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, religion, belief, culture, language, birth, HIV/Aids status, nationality, gender identity, albinism and occupation or trade - in a way that incites others to harm such a person or group of persons, whether or not such person or group of persons is harmed, will be guilty of hate speech.

The phrase "by any means whatsoever" will include all forms of communication, including social media. Harm is defined to include damage to property, physical harm and mental or psychological harm.

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Some commentators have said the bill will infringe the right to freedom of speech. The intention of the bill is not to limit freedom of speech. The right to freedom of speech must be balanced, in the same way all constitutional rights are.

A person's right to dignity is surely just as important as another person's right to freedom of speech.

Ironically, opposition to the bill is coming from some religious groups.

The intention of the bill is not to eliminate racism - this cannot be done until the structural inequalities which underpin racism in South Africa have been addressed. The inclusion of a crime of hate speech in the bill is to provide for some form of criminal sanction for outrageous and hurtful utterances.

One would have hoped that our nation, given the intense public discourse around the topic of racism over the past year, would have steered clear of this type of behaviour, but it was not to be - witness the utterances on Hout Bay and the Durban beachfront, and barring access to Saldanha Bay beaches. The mind boggles at how people can still think this way in a year when we celebrate the 20th anniversary of our constitution.

As Sipho Hlongwane wrote, racism is an everyday thing in South Africa.

There is no silver bullet that will miraculously cure the country of hate speech and racism.

As we enter a new year, one can only hope that 2017 will be one of more tolerance and more respect. As the song says: "Let's take a cup o' kindness yet, for auld lang syne."

• Jeffery is deputy justice minister