SA must ‘take ownership’ of democracy
The following article was published online in the Sunday Times:
South Africans must “take ownership” of democracy and play a more “robust” role in making the country work, the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, Thabo Makgoba, has said.
He told the Sunday Times that it was for precisely this reason he had agreed to serve on a commission that will examine different forms of print media regulation and their likely impact on media freedom and democracy.
The Press Freedom Commission, to be chaired by former chief justice Pius Langa, was founded on Thursday.
The new organisation is the brainchild of the South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) and Print Media South Africa, and is expected to produce a report by the end of March.
“We can’t leave our lives in the hands of the politicians,” said Makgoba. “We have to take ownership, we have to participate in our democracy.”
The commission was created against a backdrop of government attempts to pass the Protection of Information Bill, which Makgoba, 50, called “a secrecy deal”, and the ANC’s efforts to establish a media appeals tribunal.
The head of the Anglican Church in Southern Africa said a government-regulated tribunal was not the way forward.
The ANC has already attacked the commission, but Makgoba said that the creation and work of the organisation would not be a pointless exercise.
“We’d be naive not to expect criticism. But whether the ANC hears us with an open mind or not, our job is to produce an independent report. We jumped up and down and supported the Right2know (campaign against the Protection of Information Bill) and the ANC were going to go ahead with the secrecy deal, but look at what has happened because the people spoke.
“If the ANC says it doesn’t want to hear our recommendations, we will go ahead nonetheless. We believe in participatory democracy and we say: ‘Let South Africans speak’.”
He stressed that media freedom was a right under the constitution, not a favour bestowed by government.
“If we don’t do everything possible to protect this freedom, we stand to lose a lot of other related rights.”
Does he see any common ground at all between the commission and the ANC?
“The common ground is that we are all South Africans, and we need to say: ‘What kind of SA do we want?’ Are we prepared to be shut off from information because the ruling party doesn’t agree in helping our democracy to grow? This is not what the majority of South Africans have fought for, or even the ANC.”
Source: TimesLive.
