IPI urges Zuma to reject secrecy Bill

IPI urges Zuma to reject secrecy Bill
By Masuzyo Chakwe
Sun 27 Nov. 2011, 12:00 CAT

THE International Press Institute has written to South African President Jacob Zuma urging him to reject the Protection of State Information Bill if it is not amended to allow a public interest defence plea.

The open letter was signed by IPI's executive director Alison Bethel McKenzie who is also editor of City Press Ferial Haffajee; editor of the Financial Mail Barney Mthombothi and Raymond Louw, chairperson of the South Africa Press Council and publisher of the Southern Africa report.

McKenzie wrote to President Zuma in August last year to express IPI's concerns over the bill, as well as IPI's concern over the ANC's proposed media tribunal.

The letter stated that while some positive changes had been made to the Secrecy Bill since then, the fact remained that journalists faced between five and 25 years in prison for revealing classified information - and no explicit defense was provided for those who do so in the public interest.

"As we said before, this law would have a deleterious effect on investigative journalism in South Africa. One of the core duties of journalists is to ensure government accountability, including through the publication of information that may have been deemed secret not because its revelation would threaten national security, but because it reflects poorly on a particular public official or public institution," it stated.

IPI stated that governments come and go and what remained was the media's duty to hold the government of the day accountable for its actions.

"If journalists must think twice or three times before publishing crucial information because they are afraid that they could receive a prison sentence similar to that of a violent criminal, there will be fewer reports, and in the long term it is the public and the nation that will suffer," they stated.

"We understand that the Protection of Information Bill must now be passed by the National Council of Provinces. We hope that they will insist on the inclusion of a provision that allows those who report on secret information to plead a public interest defence, which would be determined on a case by case basis by the court in which the journalist is accused of breaching the law. But if they do not, then we hope that you, as President of South Africa, will see to it that this legislation is stopped before it can do any damage to the robust media and democracy that South Africans enjoy today."

IPI is a Vienna-based global network of publishers, editors and journalists dedicated to the furtherance and defence of press freedom around the world.

The bill's adoption comes after months of friction between the media and the ruling African National Congress (ANC), including a complaint against the Mail & Guardian newspaper last week by President Zuma's spokesperson, Mac Maharaj.

Protests against the proposed law were organised last Tuesday in Pretoria, Johannesburg, Soweto and Cape Town. The leading South African newspapers published a joint editorial criticizing it, while opposition parties, human rights organizations and free speech groups urged South Africans to wear black for what they called "Black Tuesday".

When a major demonstration against the bill was held last September in Cape Town, the ANC responded by shelving it temporarily.

Several prominent South Africans have criticized the law, among them Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu, Nobel literature laureate Nadine Gordimer and politicians such as ANC's former intelligence minister Ronnie Kasrils and Western Cape premier and main opposition leader Helen Zille of the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA).

The law has also been criticised by organisations such as the South African National Editors' Forum and the Nelson Mandela Foundation, which on Tuesday said it was unacceptable in its current form.

In 1997, then Republican president Mandela pledged media freedom would never be threatened in South Africa "as long as the ANC is the ruling party".