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Across the country, the tide of public outrage at the Secrecy Bill continues to grow as the ANC refuses to budge on the Bill’s most draconian provisions. At a late-night meeting of Parliament’s ad hoc committee on the Secrecy Bill on Thursday, with only a few members of the public present, ANC backbencher Annelize van Wyk acknowledged that “the country is in uproar” over the Secrecy Bill.
This week alone faith leaders came together in Gugulethu in Cape Town to reject the Secrecy Bill. In the Eastern Cape the Unemployed People’s Movement and others are preparing to mobilise communities against the Bill. The Freedom of Expression Network, a nation-wide network of activists and community leaders are preparing to organise in poor and marginalised communities in seven provinces. In Gauteng, the Right2Know campaign is mounting a mass rally in Johannesburg on 13 August and in the Western Cape there are pickets outside Parliament nearly every day. This movement is growing!
In Parliament this week, despite promising concessions proposed by democrats within the caucus, the ANC has refuse to budge on our demands for a public interest defence, offering only the narrowest possible protection to whistleblowers. Members of the public would be offered no protection from prosecution under the Bill!
At the same time, the ANC proposed to further broaden the definition of ‘national security’, to draw a veil of secrecy over all activities within the state security apparatus, even those that do not relate to the safety and security of the people of South Africa, and backtracked on an early promise to ensure that commercial information could not be classified in the supposed interests of ‘national security’. This was one of civil society’s earliest victories, won through nation-wide public protest in October 2010.
The Right2Know campaign condemns the ruling party’s refusal to act against the Bill’s most draconian provisions. These developments suggest that the spirit of paranoia in which the Secrecy Bill was drafted is still alive and well. Furthermore, they undermine the work by democrats within all parties to begin meeting civil society’s demands to scrap the Bill’s draconian secrecy clauses.
This week’s events undermine what public faith remains in the will of our Parliamentarians to rid the Protection of Information Bill of its true draconian character, without rewriting it from scratch. Furthermore, they underscore the deeply felt concerns, embodied by months of public outrage, that the Protection of Information Bill is an attempt by securocrats within the state to bolster their own powers.
In light of this, we reiterate our longstanding call that the current Bill should be scrapped in its entirety; the process must begin again, with full public consultation. The multitudes of South Africans who have united in opposition to the Secrecy Bill must be recognised; their voices must be heard. The Secrecy Bill must be scrapped!