Cape Times editorial on the Secrecy Bill

The following article was published online by The Mercury

The protracted deliberations on the Protection of Information Bill resumed in Parliament this week, with the ANC showing a willingness to consider additional changes to the piece of legislation that has stirred up a storm of protest.

Thanks to the mobilisation of civil society, the ruling party has already been forced to make a number of significant concessions about the Secrecy Bill since it was first debated over a year ago. In a turnaround last month, the ANC agreed to scrap mandatory prison sentences for possessing and publishing secret information and the power to classify information has now been limited to state security bodies. This is a considerable shift from the original draft, which sought to allow more than 1 000 organs of state, from ministries to public museums, to keep top-secret files.

These shifts would not have been considered were it not for the campaigning and lobbying that took place by a wide range of groups, from lawyers, academics, writers and the media to trade unions, politicians and non-governmental organisations.

But this is no time to be complacent, which is why the Right2Know campaign has arranged a daily picket outside Parliament throughout the week while the ad hoc committee thrashes out the issues in Parliament.

There is still a lot of chipping away to be done before the bill will fall in line with the constitution and be limited to protecting only highly sensitive state information. So far the ANC has refused to entertain a public-interest defence for whistleblowers and journalists facing jail sentences, and the definition of a “security matter” still leaves wide scope for information to be classified in order to cover up fraud and corruption.

While the debate continues, there have been calls by some commentators, including Wits Law Professor Iain Currie, to abandon the legislature’s “emergency surgery” on the flawed bill and redraft it entirely.

Transparency and accountability are the cornerstones of democracy. It is possible that after the “emergency surgery” process has been completed, the bill will still be too restrictive. Then the country will be heading for round two in the Constitutional Court.

Source: The Mercury