ANC rethink on ‘security’ in secrecy bill
The following article was published online by Business Day:
ANC poised to push for national security to be not defined at all in the “secrecy bill” legislation
In a surprise move in the Parliamentary committee deliberating on the “secrecy bill”, the African National Congress (ANC) has suggested that it is poised to push for national security to be not defined at all in the legislation.
This follows intense negotiations in the ad hoc committee on the Protection of Information Bill over how “national interest” will be defined. The opposition argues it should be narrowly defined while the ANC has argued for a much broader definition that includes concepts such as “information peddling”.
After the bill was tabled many months ago, opposition parties and civil society argued the definitions of both national security and national interest were so broad as to allow almost anything to be classified.
Since then, in a major concession, the ANC has agreed to the concept of national interest being dropped and the bill being directed at national security issues only.
Yesterday, when the committee began renewed discussions on what national security really meant, the leader of the ANC component in the committee, Luwellyn Landers, took the opposition by surprise by saying: “Do we even need a definition of national security?” He indicated the ANC had not yet decided whether to have a definition.
The opposition response was immediate, with the Democratic Alliance’s David Maynier saying the DA strongly believed national security should be defined as clear guidance had to be given to officials doing the classifying. He warned the lack of a definition of what could or could not be classified in the interests of national security would give very wide discretion to “the classifiers”.
Mr Landers had said the courts and judges knew what national security meant and the ANC was considering leaving it to their discretion. He said national security meant different things in different countries, with a third-world country perhaps seeing it as an electoral threat while others would see it as an attack of some sort.
Inkatha Freedom Party MP Mario Ambrosini warned that national security was a highly contested concept and in cases where difficulty was experienced in the courts they often simply left it up to government to make the call. He said if there was no definition, at least the bill should say classification should be confined to times when there was “clear and present danger” for SA.
Mr Maynier stressed that if national security was not defined, SA could end up with a multitude of diverse interpretations as the law would not be clear. He insisted that national security should not include things such as lawful political activity, legal protests and dissent.
“It is a contested concept which changes from country to country and that is precisely why we must say exactly what it means in SA.”
African Christian Democratic Party MP Steve Swart said that the parties had been very close to a compromise definition and he felt “a definition would be preferable to none at all”.
Source: Business Day
