Anew official secrets bill proposed by South African President Jacob Zuma's ruling ANC party has sent the country's press and broadcast editors scurrying to their laptops – and this week led to political correspondents organising a sit-in at parliament in protest. The Protection of Information bill would allow senior civil servants to classify vast amounts of information as confidential "in the national interest". Disclosure of such secrets would be criminalised - with a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison. Hardly a day has gone by in the past month without yet another seriously worded opinion piece in the press accusing the party that freed the nation from apartheid of betraying the constitutional right to freedom of expression. The great and good from the arts – Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer, author Andre Brink and veteran actor John Kani – recently posted an advertisement in every major newspaper in the land decrying the proposed law as a return to apartheid-era banning orders that would create a "word police". Meanwhile, the news pages have been reporting on the emergence of a new class of mega-rich "tenderpreneurs" – friends and family of politicians and senior officials who win sizeable government contracts. Most recently Jacob Zuma's son and a few business associates stepped in to grab some lapsed iron-ore prospecting rights from ArcelorMittal, which they then sold back to the multinational steel manufacturing giant for a cool £70 million – a tidy sum for a small company whose only asset of value was the mining licence in question. As the press has stepped up its campaign against the secrecy bill, senior ANC figures have revealed that they feel embattled. Zuma recently turned on the media, dismissing any comparisons between the ANC government's draft bill and the legislation of apartheid regimes as "preposterous... disingenuous and an unbearable insult". In the governmment's defence, state law adviser Enver Daniels has argued that the new bill is necessary to replace apartheid-era secrecy laws that remain in place. In its war of words with the media, the ANC has also made a strong argument for the kind of concerns that it would like journalists to espouse when covering the day-to-day business of fostering what remains a relatively new-born nation of only 16 years. A recent top-level ANC discussion document contrasts "the ANC's outlook and values (developmental state, collective rights, values of caring and sharing community, solidarity, ubuntu, non-sexism, working together)" with the "media's ideological outlook (neo-liberalism, a weak and passive state, and overemphasis on individual rights, market fundamentalism, etc)". A cursory review of the press's daily output appears to confirm ruling party perceptions. Despite genuine attempts by many journalists to tackle the important developmental concerns facing the nation, sport achievements and wildlife protection frequently receive more front-page space in the nation's flagship dailies than the pressing issues of huge unemployment (at 25 per cent, the world's highest rate), inadequate health services, and widespread poverty among South Africa's majority black population, most of whom live in makeshift townships lacking basic sanitation on the fringes of the big cities. The issue of bias, which the ANC regularly alleges, has also been compounded by serious questions being asked about the South Zuma and media at war over official secrets bill
South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma furious at ‘back to apartheid’ insult
cont
Read more: http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/67810,news-comment,news-politics,jacob-zuma-and-media-in-south-africa-at-war-over-official-secrets-bill?DCMP=NLC-daily#ixzz0xoH5I1N4
Friday, 27 August 2010
LAST UPDATED 7:37 AM, AUGUST 27, 2010
Posts
