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The Right2Know Campaign has struggled against government and private sector secrecy since our formation. Openness and transparency are fundamental Constitutional values of our democracy. South Africa is a founding member of the Open Government Partnership and since November 2015 has been the lead co-chair of the international OGP which calls for greater openness in governance and greater collaboration and partnership with civil society.

On Thursday and Friday this week, the OGP is hosting its Africa regional meeting in Cape Town. Government and civil society delegations from across the region are congregating in Cape Town and are looking to South Africa for leadership in implementing openness.

However, since its founding in 2011, South Africa has not even established a permanent Multi-Stakeholder Dialogue Mechanism as recommended in terms of best OGP practice. This has meant that there has not been an equal partnership between government and civil society in developing, tracking or reviewing the National Action Plan.

The potential for this platform is enormous, and its absence has resulted in an OGP process in South Africa that is completely neutered and ineffective at best.

We believe that South Africa’s role as co-chair has been dishonest, and is an insult to those who are working so hard to create a democratic and constitutional order.  It allows the South African government to hide behind the role it has adopted, without actually delivering an honest process or tangible results.

All of this is happening against a backdrop of a decline in transparency, an increase in securitisation and a visible clampdown on civil society.

Over the past five years we have seen the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA), which is intended to facilitate the free flow of information, used to in fact restrict access to information vital to communities and organisations who need it to realise other fundamental human rights. The PAIA Civil Society Network’s 2014 shadow report has revealed that more than half of all tracked information requests made by civil society have either never been replied to or been refused.

In addition, the State has systematically closed the spaces for meaningful public engagement and citizen participation in our democracy. We have seen the right to protest come under increasing threat, with more police brutality and arrests during protests, and a clamp down on protest by police and local government across the country. Massive student protests across the country were met with state violence and repression. Surveillance of activists has increasingly become a fear amongst activists and journalists, and the State Security Agency has on several occasions accused civil society organisations of being foreign spies and threatening to close them down. Even the National Assembly in Parliament has been targeted and shut down.  Activists have been murdered, with no prosecutions or convictions, as seen in Glebelands and Amadiba. And notwithstanding many promises by government and despite active civil society campaigns since 1994, we still see no progress in forcing political parties to be transparent about who is funding them.

The Right2Know Campaign fully endorses the attached open letter to the South African government and the demands to rescue the OGP in South Africa.

We call on civil society organisations, community based organisations and individuals to join us in sending a strong message to the South African government: Unlock the partnership! We will not be co-opted in order to legitimize this farce.

Issued by Right2Know