THE ENGLISH ACADEMY OF SOUTHERN AFRICA

PUBLIC STATEMENT
The English Academy of Southern Africa is deeply concerned at the trends evident in the
Protection of Information Bill and the proposed Media Appeals Tribunal, and calls on the
government and the ANC to reconsider them. Both proposals are radically at odds with the
spirit of liberation enshrined in our national Constitution, and represent a drift back to the
oppressive spirit of the apartheid state. This neo-colonial trend should be halted before it
gains momentum.

The proposals are silent on whose interests are to be served by the measures envisaged.
There is, of course, a legitimate “national interest” and we would expect all legislation to
serve it. However, the unfortunate history of the term in South Africa demands that we be
explicit about its meaning in the democratic era. BJ Vorster gave “the national interest”
priority over all other interests to justify the increasing oppression of the apartheid state. In
the democratic state, then, the national interest has to be interpreted in relation to the
constitutional concepts of the public interest and the right to know. Failure to be explicit in
this matter opens the way for “the national interest” to represent the political interests of
the ruling party, or (even more narrowly) the government of the day.

The proposal for a Media Appeals Tribunal suggests that these dangers are real and
immediate. A tribunal which is managed politically and is empowered to impose penalties
which effectively shut down “troublesome” media is fundamentally at odds with democracy.
To propose for serious consideration that South Africa establish such a body is a mark either
of resorting by reflex to the totalitarian assumptions of the apartheid state, or of a cynicism
which we would not wish to ascribe to any party in a democratic South Africa.

As a nation we must avoid replicating the profound errors of the past. The two proposals
discussed here threaten to undermine the national transformation project by recreating
objectionable aspects of that past. They confuse key conceptual issues and in doing so open
the way for approaches and actions alien to a democratic state. Documents so
fundamentally flawed cannot be satisfactorily amended. If the founding principles of a
liberated, democratic South Africa are to be honoured and increasingly realised, nothing
short of a radical rethink will do.