INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPERS

Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi. Photo: Jacques Naude

Cosatu said Thursday it wanted urgent meetings with its alliance partners, the ANC and SACP, to discuss its concerns about the Protection of State Information Bill.

The SACP supports the bill, which the ANC overwhelmingly endorsed in the National Assembly on Tuesday.

It now goes before the National Council of Provinces (NCOP), which on Thursday decided to set up a multiparty ad hoc committee to consider it – a move welcomed on Thursday by the Right2Know campaign and the SA National Editors’ Forum (Sanef).

Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi said he had been told the NCOP process would “open the space” for further amendments to the bill, which the labour federation believed had been cast too broadly.

While Cosatu was “unequivocally opposed to acts of espionage or activities that are hostile to the state”, it was “concerned that relevant provisions in the bill are capable of such broad interpretation that it would have the effect of imposing criminal responsibility on whistleblowers who disclose information in the public interest”, Vavi said.

The DA on Thursday set out plans for a co-ordinated campaign both within and outside parliament – including “flash mobs” of gagged protesters at high-profile events.

Chief whip Mathole Motshekga said the ANC would support “any party that feels the Constitutional Court should test the validity of any law”.

“Our laws are subject to constitutional scrutiny, and we welcome that,” he said.

But he took exception to the DA’s plans, saying the party was represented in Parliament and “part of the process. If they have inputs to make, they must do so,” he said.

Motshekga also took exception to the campaign launched by international online activist organisation Avaaz, which circulated his and other ANC and parliamentary officials’ numbers and e-mail addresses, resulting in a flood of mail and causing “our phones to ring endlessly”.

“Who can now deny there is foreign interference in our country?” Motshekga asked.

People had a right to protest, but “wouldn’t know a dark force was behind them”, Motshekga said.

DA leader Helen Zille told journalists at parliament she had written asking President Jacob Zuma for a private meeting “to discuss the immediate as well as far-reaching implications” of the bill.

She said the party’s members on the NCOP ad hoc committee, Alf Lees and Darrel Worth, would first fight for an extension to the committee’s March 8 deadline, by when it must report back on the bill.

The time allowed was insufficient for proper public participation, Zille said.

Of the committee’s 15 members, 10 come from the ANC, two from the DA, and one each from the ID, IFP and Cope.

Zille, the Western Cape premier, said she would personally argue her party’s case in the NCOP as a “special delegate”.

Her party would propose several amendments – all so far rejected by the ANC – including a public-interest defence clause.

Speaking after a meeting of the labour federation’s central executive committee (CEC) in Joburg on Thursday, Vavi said such a defence would “maintain a balance between the restrictions legitimately placed on state information against disclosures and media publication of such information in the public interest”.

Vavi said the CEC had decided that “if we cannot persuade the government to withdraw the bill”, it would launch a constitutional court action “as we believe these proposals are unconstitutional”.

A constitutional court challenge is also being contemplated by the DA, the Right2Know campaign and other opponents, including Sanef.

DA parliamentary leader Lindiwe Mazibuko is to head a campaign to lobby other opposition MPs to back a petition under section 80 of the constitution. It allows MPs to ask the Concourt to consider a bill they believe to be unconstitutional.

The support of one-third of National Assembly members (134) is needed, and such an action must be launched within 30 days of the bill being signed into law by the president. The combined total of opposition seats in the Assembly is 136.

The DA said another possibility would be petitioning Zuma under section 79 of the constitution to refer the bill to the Concourt, should the NCOP return it unchanged to the Assembly for ratification. - Political Bureau