In a study of five transitional democracies, South Africa has fared worst in providing citizens with access to information.
And the Presidency was among a handful of institutions that failed to provide any information in response to requests filed under the country’s much-vaunted Promotion of Access to Information Act.
The study was coordinated internationally last year by the Open Society Institute of financier George Soros. Local NGOs, newspapers (including the Mail & Guardian) and non-affiliated citizens participated in the exercise to test freedom-of-information laws and practices.
Access to information held by government bodies is increasingly seen as a fundamental human right and an important tool to empower citizens and battle corruption.
In South Africa a total of 96 requests for information — ranging from ”routine” to ”difficult” and ”sensitive” — were directed at a range of government bodies and parastatals. Only 23%, or less than one in four, of the requests were fulfilled. This compared badly with the other countries tested: Peru (42%), Armenia (41%), Bulgaria (38%) and Macedonia (34%).
An Open Society report detailing the results of the study will be released formally on Right to Know Day next Tuesday.
The report notes surprise at the level of non-compliance in South Africa. ”The Promotion of Access to Information Act, which entered into force in 2000, has been lauded as an excellent law on paper. [It] is the first [freedom of information] law in Africa and is being held up as a model for other African countries.
”This monitoring highlights some serious problems with implementation which need to be addressed if the right of access to information is to be enjoyed in South Africa …”
The Presidency was among those which performed worst in South Africa. Two-thirds of the questions directed to it received no reply within the 30-day period provided for by the Act. The remaining one-third were either met by oral refusals to provide information or the requestors were unable to get the Presidency to accept the requests in the first place.
This is in stark contrast with Peru, for example, where the presidency met two out of every three requests. The South African Presidency’s failure to fulfil its obligations under the Act also stands in stark contrast to President Thabo Mbeki’s leading role to initiate the legislation.
Others that fared badly in South Africa were Eskom and the Independent Development Trust, neither of which answered any requests, and the environment and health departments, where requestors in one-third of cases could not get their requests accepted, while the two-thirds of requests that were successfully filed with them received no response within 30 days.
Those who did better were provincial premiers and the departments of education and defence, where half of all requests were fulfilled.
Of concern in view of the country’s history of inequality was the treatment received by requestors from ”excluded” groups — disabled and illiterate people. The Act provides that they be assisted by officials to file requests for information. But the report found that this was not respected in practice: an illiterate requestor managed to file only one out of 10 requests that she submitted orally. ”She was given the run-around, passed from office to office, and treated dismissively.”
A blind requestor also failed to have many requests filed. These cases contributed to South Africa’s relatively high level of ”unable to submit” requests. At 17%, this was the second worst result in this category after Bulgaria.
Why did South Africa do so badly? Open Society admits that during the study there were discrepancies in the vigour with which some requestors pursued their requests, which could have led to distortions. But in South Africa the gap between good law and bad practice seemed to result, among other things, from a lack of training for officials supposed to handle requests for information.
Another reason: Open Society says that in follow-up interviews many South African officials felt that information they released would be abused. They thought information would be ”used against the government” or that requestors had ”ulterior motives”.
Stefaans Brümmer was one of the participants in the study, which was coordinated locally by the Open Democracy Advice Centre