Using an apartheid-era law to restrict information about an alleged R90-million fence around President Thabo Mbeki’s official residence was ”concerning,” the South African National Editors Forum (Sanef) has said.
Sanef reacted on Wednesday to a report in the Citizen newspaper in which Department of Public Works spokesperson Thami Mchunu said the Bryntirion government estate in Pretoria was a ”national key point”, and as such, no information could be published without official permission.
Mchunu said a ”comprehensive security upgrade” was part of the routine security and maintenance of state assets. He refused to divulge costs.
Sanef said that the National Key Points Act was an apartheid-era law that had no place in democratic South Africa and had asked the government to remove it from the statute book, said Raymond Louw, chairperson of the Sanef media freedom committee.
”It is outrageous that a government department should now invoke the Act to prevent information from being disseminated to the public.”
”Sanef’s concern is that here, as in Zimbabwe, the government is resorting to apartheid-government censorship to prevent the public from knowing what’s going on.”
Opposition parties have demanded clarity on the apparent plans to erect a R90-million security wall around the complex.
Sanef feared South Africa might start ”a perilous descent into further censorship” if the ban on information under the Act was not withdrawn.
The Act stipulates that no information or photograph of a National Key Point could be published without official permission.
However, the national key points had never been publicly listed, Louw said.
Attempts over the years to invoke the Act to prevent photographs of certain incidents had been withdrawn when protests were raised, he said.
The residences of Mbeki, the deputy president and Cabinet ministers are situated on the 100-year-old Bryntirion government estate in Pretoria. – Sapa