Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Helen Zille on Friday accused the African National Congress (ANC) of shutting down the space for free and informed debate.
Writing in her weekly newsletter, Zille said recent events suggested the image of openness that ANC president Jacob Zuma was cultivating was just a smokescreen for closing down the public space.
”The truth is that while Zuma professes to be open to discussion, the ANC is simultaneously shutting down the space for free and informed debate without which democracy cannot exist.
”All the signs are there that, behind Zuma’s affable rhetoric, his party is determined to close down real debate, public participation and access to information — the hallmarks of the open society envisaged in our Constitution,” Zille said.
President Thabo Mbeki’s refusal — no doubt at the behest of the ANC leadership — to release the full Khampepe commission report on the location and mandate of the Scorpions was a case in point.
Instead of releasing the report in good time before the legislation to disband the Scorpions was debated in Parliament, Mbeki had cited ”national security” as the reason to withhold it from the public.
There were other more far-reaching plans afoot to close down the public space.
One was the ANC’s resolution to institute a media tribunal to make the media accountable to Parliament.
”Under this proposal, politicians will have the power to call the media to account, a fundamental attack on the constitutionally enshrined principle of press freedom,” Zille said.
Another, perhaps even more sinister proposal, was contained in the draft Protection of Information Bill.
Under this proposed legislation, publishing ”sensitive information”, defined as threatening the ”national interest”, would be a criminal offence if the intention was to ”prejudice the state”.
Included among matters in the national interest were ”defence and security plans”, ”significant political and economic relations with international organisations and foreign governments” and ”details of criminal investigations”.
As the Mail & Guardian pointed out last week, if this legislation had been in place at the time, its exposés on police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi would have been illegal.
Zille said perhaps the starkest indication of the ANC’s plans to shut down the open society was the arena where robust debate was most needed — Parliament.
The DA had long warned that the ANC wanted to turn Parliament into a rubber stamp for the executive.
”This year, we also face the prospect of Parliament sitting for a mere 15 days for the entire second half of the year.”
In this time, Parliament was expected to process the 102 Bills before it.
The ANC’s aim was two-fold. Firstly, it wanted to free up the time of its MPs to manage the run-up to the ANC’s list conference, where the next generation of ANC MPs will be nominated.
Secondly, by limiting the time for debate in Parliament, the ANC aimed to rush through several controversial Bills with scant regard for meaningful public participation, debate and deliberation.
”The closing down of Parliament, the threats to media freedom and the desire to shield information from the public all point to the ANC’s increased assault on the open society,” Zille said. — Sapa