The Mail & Guardian won two major court victories this week. Not defensive actions against the defamation suits or urgent interdicts that are an all-too-frequent feature of our legal diary, but activist cases that we initiated ourselves in a bid to strengthen freedom of information laws and to uncover facts that belong in the public domain.
The first case dealt with a bit of history that lingers painfully into the present: What was Thabo Mbeki told about Zimbabwe’s disputed 2002 presidential elections by two of South Africa’s leading judges, and did he listen? The report of Dikgang Moseneke and Sisi Khampepe, which the presidency must now hand over to us, ought to offer important new insights into the information that was before Mbeki when he insisted on the legitimacy of those deeply flawed polls. We are intrigued to know, too, why Jacob Zuma’s administration, with its more robust line on Zanu-PF, tried to keep the report secret and to argue sweeping executive exemption from the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA).
The second case has more obvious currency; indeed, we would argue that it is an early World Cup win for South Africa, despite the fact that our vanquished opponent was the local organising committee (LOC) that has put the event together.
We have for some nine months been asking the LOC for information about the many tenders it has issued, ranging from security and transport to catering and audiovisual equipment.
Our queries were sparked by evidence we had gathered suggesting that crucial contracts for security during the Confederations Cup, also handled by the LOC, had been badly botched. We were met by persistent blanket refusals to share any information of this kind, even when we filed formal requests in terms of the PAIA.
“We are a private organisation,” the LOC insisted. “How we spend our money has nothing to do with you or with the South African public.”
It was a ludicrous claim and flew crassly in the face of a country that was straining every sinew to put on a spectacular tournament. Fortunately, Acting Judge Les Morison agreed and we should within the next month gain access to the information that we asked for.
Why do we argue that this is a World Cup win, when critics of our approach suggest it is an Afro-pessimistic shower of rain on the national parade?
It is very simple, really. We are enormously excited about the coming month. About the sporting spectacle, about having the world all over our country — and our country all over the world — and about a celebration on a scale that we haven’t experienced since 1994, if ever.
But South Africa — and South Africans — have made major sacrifices for this tournament. We have spent money that would probably have been better directed to economic and social infrastructure. We have given Fifa extraordinary legal protection, financial indemnities, tax-free status and even the suspension of some of our rights.
The LOC owes us a duty in return. The least of it is to show us that it has spent money cleanly, effectively and fairly.
Morison’s judgment, built on the argument of our lead counsel Geoff Budlender and the team that supported him, is a compelling statement of these principles and it is well worth downloading from our website to read.
When we finally get the tender documents, the tournament will already be winding down and the LOC may feel that its delaying tactics have worked. That won’t stop us from auditing in thorough detail the committee’s work and telling you about it — the good, the bad and the indifferent — so that you can praise, or hold accountable, the men and women who held the purse-strings.
What we really want to show the world this month isn’t that we can build fancy stadiums, slick airports and pointy-nosed trains but that, 16 years on, our democracy is getting stronger and richer.
What could be more Afro-positive than a victory for independent media, in independent courts, that pierces the veil of secrecy that Fifa draws from Geneva to Jo’burg?
It is a victory that should last, too, embedding in our common law strengthened principles around the right of access to information set out in the Constitution.
None of the challenges we faced last week has gone away, of course.
The M&G has been hard on Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi at times, and for good reason, but his campaign against corruption resonates with our basic values and the attack on him by the tenderpreneur wing of the ANC represents an escalation in what is increasingly the most important battle the country faces. Not between left and right, but between those who would govern and those who would loot.
The same forces that are arrayed against Vavi are trying to isolate Public Enterprises Minister Barbara Hogan, who insists that parastatal companies, such as Transnet and Eskom, are best governed by their boards, not by politicians and crony capitalists.
They will have to keep on fighting amid the World Cup party and we will have to keep an ear cocked amid the roaring vuvuzelas for it is on these battles that our post-World Cup future hangs.
Right now, though, we hope you’ll join us in knocking off early for the party. Its been a long decade — and you’ve earned it.