South Africa: Press freedom under threat

[Erna]

Protection of Information Bill on the table.

See bill here (pdf):

http://www.parliament.gov.za/live/content.php?Item_ID=216&DocumentNumber=84004

South Africa's ruling party is proposing legislation that critics say will return the nation to apartheid-era controls on the media. South African journalists are up in arms. It was the ruling African National Congress that fought for freedom of the press when the nation was under white-rule.

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, host:

South Africa's ruling party, the African National Congress, is proposing legislation that would impose controls on the media. Critics say it would return controls that existed in the apartheid era. And that proposal makes some South African journalists anxious.

It was the African National Congress that once fought for freedom of the press when the nation was under white rule. Vicky O'Hara reports from Johannesburg.

VICKY O'HARA: Under the proposed legislation, the government would have the power to classify any media content a matter of national security and to punish any journalist who publishes classified information, with financial penalties and/or jail time. In addition, the ruling African National Congress is seeking a media tribunal, through parliament, to regulate the performance of reporters.

Mondli Makhanya, chairman of the South African National Editors' Forum and editor-in-chief of Avusa media, says the proposed tribunal would allocate too much power to politicians.

Mr. MONDLI MAKHANYA (Chairman, South African National Editors' Forum): It bodes very ill, not only for freedom of information. It bodes ill for democracy in South Africa.

O'HARA: According to Makhanya and other journalists, South Africa has protections in place for people who have complaints against the media. They suggest the proposal is nothing but an effort by the ruling party to silence criticism of corruption and other shortcomings within the ANC and government.

President Jacob Zuma becomes incensed at suggestions that his party, which fought censorship under apartheid, now opposes a free press.

President JACOB ZUMA (South Africa): We are from the ANC. We fought for the rights. We talked about the rights in the early 40s.

O'HARA: An ANC position paper on the media, says a cursory scan of print articles reveals an astonishing degree of dishonesty, lack of professional integrity and lack of independence.

South Africa's media has long enjoyed a reputation as one of the most open environments for journalists in Africa. So, the ANC's proposed media tribunal has dominated news media for weeks, in print, online and on air.

Unidentified Man: You're listening to Redi Direko, on Talk radio's 702.

Unidentified Woman: 702.

O'HARA: This popular morning talk show featured all of the principal actors in the media debate - representatives of the ANC, the media, law experts and others.

Ms. REDI DIREKO (Talk Radio 702, South Africa): We're going to start with a different angle. Instead of going straight to our panelists or doing the roundtable debate on the media tribunal and the protection of information bill.

O'HARA: South African National Editors Forum chief Makhanya says, if parliament approves the legislation, his organization will go to court. And media law specialist, Dario Milo of the Webber and Wenzel law firm, says the proposed legislation is unlikely to survive a constitutional challenge.

Mr. MAKHANYA: You can't have a government regulating, whatever form it might take, the editorial content of newspapers, which is effectively what would happen - whether it's direct or indirect - with such a tribunal.

O'HARA: But President Zuma is undeterred. Last week, he told reporters the South African press needs greater control in terms of privacy and defamation.

President ZUMA: The media that says this is a restriction on us, we are the watchdog of the people, they're never elected. They need to be governed themselves because at times they go overboard on the rights.

O'HARA: The ANC's proposals could come before parliament as early as September. South African journalists are fighting back. In a joint declaration, more than 30 prominent editors call on government to abandon the proposed legislation, saying free expression is the lifeblood of democracy.

For NPR News, I'm Vicky O'Hara in Johannesburg.

 

[Erna]

http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Govt-wont-silence-me-says-Brink-20100916

Govt won't silence me, says Brink

16 September 2010

Johannesburg - When the ANC in July unveiled proposals for a statutory tribunal to try journalists accused of incorrect or biased reporting, the country's wordsmiths went into shock.

Particularly those who had experienced censorship.

"It was a sort of shock of disbelief," one of the country's best-known novelists, André Brink, told the German Press Agency dpa in an interview.

Sixteen years after the end of the repressive apartheid regime, "it was so shocking to see the ANC moving in exactly the same direction (as the old regime)," the 75- year-old author of A Dry White Season said.


Muzzle media

Currently, South Africa's print media polices itself, through a press ombudsman and press council.

At a party conference next week in Durban, the ANC will decide whether to pursue a more punitive approach in the form of a Media Appeals Tribunal that would be set up by, and answer to, Parliament.

The proposal comes as lawmakers debate a Protection of Information bill that would give the government sweeping powers to classify information deemed to be in the loosely defined "national interest" and make the dissemination of such information punishable by up to 25 years in jail.

Following a flurry of revelations about corruption in President Jacob Zuma's government, the proposals have sparked suspicion that the ANC, which has displayed growing sensitivity to criticism, wants to muzzle the media

For Brink, whose 1973 novel Kennis van die Aand (Looking on Darkness) about a mixed-race couple was the first Afrikaans book to be banned during apartheid, the proposals smack of a return to the mind control of the past.

Outraged by the threat to South Africans' hard-won freedom of expression, Brink and Nobel literature prize winner Nadine Gordimer, author of July's People and The Conservationist and also a fierce critic of apartheid, mobilised anew.

The two launched a petition, denouncing the bill and the "Media Tribunal-World Police" as an attack not only on freedom of expression but freedom of thought.


Freedom in jeopardy

If writers' freedom is in jeopardy, "the freedom of every reader in South Africa is in danger," they warned. That includes "freedom of thought expressed, freedom of dialogue, freedom from fear of the truth about ourselves, all South Africans."

By the time the petition was sent to Zuma's office on August 31, more than 500 people had signed it, including every South African writer of note - Nobel laureate and two-time Booker winner John Maxwell Coetzee among them.

"The response was tremendous," Brink said proudly.

At the same time, he appears to hold out little hope for a democratic renewal.

"Our leaders since Mr Mandela have been deeply resistant to criticism and truth-telling," Brink wrote in an opinion piece in the New York Times last week.

Yet, until now they had drawn a line at trying to muzzle the media.

"That seems to be closing down now," Brink told dpa.

As to why it took two white authors to fire up the literary world, given the proliferation of young black writers, Brink said: "I think Nadine and I had experience of how one sees the danger looming ahead."


Controversial clauses being reviewed

"There is a feeling they're bloody well not going to silence me," he added.

In the meantime, the ANC appears to have underestimated the resistance it would encounter in trying to bring the media to heel and the damage it could cause to the country's image, which has just been buffed by a successful World Cup.

The United States-based Committee to Protect Journalists last month described the Protection of Information Bill as "reminiscent of apartheid-era regulations".

At talks last week with editors, the ANC said Parliament was reviewing some of the more controversial clauses in the Protection of Information bill, while continuing to "investigate the desirability of a statutory MAT (Media Appeals Tribunal)".

- SAPA