UCT Press launched my biography of Thomas Pringle, founder of  Press Freedom in South Africa, at the National Library on 12 February.* Outside the building the dress rehearsal for the opening of Parliament was making much noise. Next day President Zuma gave his State of the Nation speech, in which he declaimed: ‘Our constitution is truly one of our greatest achievements. Everything we do as a government is guided by our constitution and its vision of the society we are building'. 

Music to the ears of  all who treasure our Bill of Rights of 1997 and its guarantee of ‘freedom of expression, which includes freedom of the Press and other media, excluding only propaganda for war, advocacy of race or religious hatred, and incitement to cause harm.' We are offered ‘freedom to receive or impart information and ideas.' Just what Pringle fought for and won.

Every member of government and opposition hearing the President blessing our constitution, which embodies the Bill of Rights, knows, however, that the National Assembly is about to enact, and the National Council of Provinces to rubber-stamp, the Protection of State Information Bill, known as the ‘Secrecy Bill', condemned by world opinion (including that of the Secretary-General of the UN) as a direct breach of Press Freedom.

It was Thomas Pringle who created a Free Press in South Africa. Democrats today have merely to defend it. In his South African Journal of 7 April 1824, he called for ‘open discussion of difference by means of a Free Press, its liberty (not licentiousness)' protected by law. How like our Bill of Rights! The authoritarian Governor Somerset, stung by criticism of his treatment of the Albany settlers and his ‘commando' raids across the eastern frontier, closed down the South African Journal and the South African Commercial Advertiser, edited by Pringle and John Fairbairn. A year later, Somerset had to submit to orders from London to allow them to appear and in the coming few years full Press Freedom became law.

It's been a battle ever since to maintain Press Freedom, not least during the Anglo-Boer War and under the apartheid government.  With the passing of the ‘Secrecy' Bill, ‘our democracy will die a little', as the Mail and Guardian has warned. Defenders of democracy owe it to Pringle and Fairbairn to revive Press Freedom  when ‘the old order changes'.

* Thomas Pringle, South African Pioneer, Poet and Abolitionist, by Randolph Vigne (Cape Town, UCT Press, 2013)

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