The Parliamentary Press Gallery Association (PGA) has demanded the urgent reinstatement of its telephone services and a further meeting with Parliament’s institutional support divisional manager, Lionel Klassen.
On Monday, the PGA held a special general meeting to discuss the proposed relocation of offices for parliamentary-based journalists to 100 Plein Street in the parliamentary complex, after Parliament imposed an October 10 deadline for the move about two weeks ago.
Most of the PGA is still operating from within the Old Assembly Wing offices.
”The PGA members reiterated their commitment to relocate to the offices agreed to with Parliament in a manner that is not disruptive to the performance of their duties,” association chairperson Mpumelelo Mkhabela said in a statement.
Monday’s meeting expressed disappointment that Klassen on Friday ”decided to unilaterally terminate telephone services of journalists”.
”This is making the work of journalists in Parliament difficult. We have demanded an urgent reinstatement of the telephone lines and further suggested a reasonably practical time within which journalists will relocate to 100 Plein Street.
”We have also requested a meeting with Klassen to communicate the PGA’s position,” he said.
The PGA has been in a lengthy battle with Parliament, which says it needs the offices within the main parliamentary buildings for officials, and agreed earlier this year to move to the new offices next door to the 120 Plein Street ministerial office block.
The South African chapter of the Media Institute of Southern Africa (Misa) called on President Thabo Mbeki to get involved in the dispute.
”In view of the seriousness of the situation, Misa SA takes the extreme step of calling on President Thabo Mbeki to step in and order the restoration of the journalists’ communications and constitutional order to Parliament,” Misa’s spokesperson Raymond Louw said in a statement on Monday evening.
Louw said the severing of telephonic communications defied the core principles of the Constitution, and was ”authoritarian censorship which strikes at the heart of South Africa’s democratic system”.
”The officials’ conduct offends against the Constitution’s Clause Seven, which lays down as a basic principle that the state must respect, protect, promote and fulfil the rights in the Bill of
Rights and another basic principle, in Clause Eight, which binds the legislature, the executive and all organs of state to uphold the Bill of Rights.
”And the rights that the Constitution demands must be upheld are those contained in Clause 16, which ensures citizens’ freedom of expression and freedom of the media,” Louw said. — Sapa