THE decision last week not to include a public interest defence in the Protection of Information Bill is the latest evidence that this so-called Secrecy Bill will critically curtail the public right to know.
The bill completed its passage through the ad hoc parliamentary committee last week and is now one step closer to becoming law, without that key clause.
This means that the possession or disclosure of classified information is an offence carrying a mandatory jail term.
Journalists face stiff prison sentences under the law if they publish classified information without first asking the governnment to declassify it.
And anyone who comes across classified documents and who doesn’t hand them over to the police or a security agency will face a jail sentence of between five and 25 years.
Opposition parties, who have managed to extract important concessions during the long debate, failed to persuade the ANC majority in the committee to reconsider the three clauses dealing with the unlawful possession or disclosure of classified information.
The DA, the ACDP and the Inkatha Freedom Party had all suggested the inclusion of a clause to protect those who reveal classified information in the public interest.
The committee meets today to deal with the technical implications of the bill, which will then go to parliament for debate before being signed into law by the president.
Last month, this newspaper joined calls from civil society for the bill to be scrapped, arguing that it “seems futile to keep on chipping away relentlessly at a blemished piece of legislation”.
In spite of the commendable efforts of some MPs, and in spite of the outcry and the relentless campaigning by trade unions and human rights organisations, the finished product is still deeply flawed.
In essence this bill is an assault on the right of citizens to information to which they should be entitled, and a sad reminder of the tendency of the state, even in a democracy, to encroach on civil liberties. This tendency is not, of course, peculiar to South Africa: it is discernible in the rich democracies also. But it is no less dangerous for all that.