ANC internal democracy and public participation

The detractors of the ANC have sought to use the process leading to the passage of the Protection of State Information Bill by the National Assembly to entrench their perception that the ANC is divided. This perception was reinforced by the fact that some individuals who once served in the Cabinet or Constitutional development structures of the ANC opposed certain aspects of the Bill.

But from the outset the ANC in and outside Parliament never sought to impose the Bill on its members and society broadly. It initiated internal debates within the Peace and Stability NEC Sub-committee and the corresponding study group in Parliament. In both these forums ANC members were offered opportunities to debate the desirability and otherwise of the Bill and the principles underlying it.

In both forums members engaged one another and sought to reach consensus. The same approach was adopted within the Executive. When sufficient consensus was achieved the Minister of State Security, Comrade Siyabonga Cwele tabled the Bill for consideration by the relevant Portfolio Committee in Parliament. The Political Committee in Parliament monitored and evaluated the performance of our members in the Ad-hoc Committee throughout the process and invited the Chairperson and Whip of the Committee to brief it on the progress being made in the Committee.

When opposition to the certain aspects of the Bill intensified the Political Committee sought the guidance of the NWC and the NEC. Following these consultations and deliberations and many twigging and amendments of the original proposal there was a convergent of views and we concluded to proceed with the Bill. When we were on the point of tabling the Bill the campaign against the Bill intensified and claims were made that the ANC in and outside parliament was divided on the Bill. The NEC advised Caucus not to rush the Bill in the light of the rising opposition and the perception that the ANC was divided.

We postponed tabling the Bill in the National Assembly and embarked on an internal democratic process to ensure that the ANC in and outside parliament sing from the same hymn book and secondly that the public, especially the silent majority, is given the opportunity to express themselves freely on the Bill. We also ensured that the public participation process is inclusive of all South Africans, regardless of political affiliation, who sought to make inputs.

Pursuant to the ANC internal democratic principles and policy-making processes the Secretary General convened a meeting of the Provincial Secretaries, Speakers/ Presiding Officers within the three spheres of the legislative sector. The meeting resolved that inter-parliamentary caucuses be held in all nine provinces to prepare for Regional Peoples' Assemblies which were followed by Local Peoples' Assemblies in some provinces. The Peoples' Assemblies were open to all South Africans, both black and white, regardless of their party political affiliation.

The ANC Study Group, including the Minister of State Security Comrade Siyabonga Cwele and the Chairperson of the Standing Committee, Comrade Cecil Burgess criss-crossed the country to brief the inter-parliamentary caucuses and the Peoples' Assemblies. The Information Bill Unit within the ANC Parliamentary caucus was also established by caucus and further invited members of the public to make submissions for consideration by the study group. The Information Bill Unit received thousands of protest letters and no proposals for the improvement of the Bill.

Many amendments were made taking into account many valuable inputs by other political parties and members of the publics. There were agreements and further convergent of views on many issues, the only major criticism that emerged was that the Bill failed to include a public interest defence clause. "Public interest" is implausible, logically unsound, indefinite, arbitrary, constantly shifting, vague and elastic. Its proponents have offered no precise, rigorous definition to what exactly does this supposedly laudable concept applies to.

Its proponents suppose that "public interest" applies against what they despise. This is nothing but stupid liberal snobbery. Just as there may be sectional public interest in knowing about public corruption, there's also public interest in knowing about rape victims. Just look at the rate of success of tabloid journalism to know that the public is intensely interested in unseemly human behaviour. So should we be publishing identities of rape victims, including minors, just because there are sections of the public who are intensely interested in them?

Our view was (and still is) that the inclusion of such a clause in the form and shape proposed and canvassed by the media would make South Africa the only state without state security in the world. In other words the inclusion of this clause would weaken the state's powers to address the illegal possession of classified state information. I'm not aware of any country that allows anybody but vetted intelligence operatives to possess classified material.

Mr Ambrosini of the IFP is the only Member of Parliament who submitted more than 100 amendments clearly aimed at filibustering. Be that as it may the ANC Whippery in consultation with the Whippery of other political parties represented in Parliament agreed to ask Parliament to re-establish and refer the Bill and the proposed amendments to the Ad Hoc Committee for consideration. The Ad Hoc Committee considered the proposed amendments clause by clause and afforded Mr Ambrosini an opportunity to motivate. He failed dismally to persuade any political party including his own IFP to accept the amendments.

The Ad Hoc Committee tabled its report in the National Assembly that passed the Protection of Information Bill with an overwhelming majority and referred it to the National Council of Provinces for consideration. The other parties that opposed the Bill read declarations threatening to take the Protection of State Information Bill to the Constitutional Court if the Bill was passed in its current form without a public interest defence clause.

These parties were all putting the cart before the horse because Parliament consists of the National Assembly (NA) and the National Council of Provinces (NCOP). These parties still have the opportunity to persuade the NCOP which represents provincial interests to amend the Bill when it is tabled before it. It was therefore premature and undemocratic to seek to stop the referral of the Bill to the NCOP and to threaten to go to the Constitutional Court before the parliamentary processes are exhausted.

Falsehoods have been propagated that the Protection of State Information Bill may not be constitutional, that is outright lies. The Protection of State Information Bill is perfectly constitutional. Section 32 on Access to Information has Subsection 2 that expressly states that laws around information accessibility must be made. The Public Access to Information Act, Public Disclosure Act, for instance, are such laws.

Section 36, however, expressly states that there are limitations of rights to the extent that such limitations are reasonable and justifiable. Now that is the litmus test of Protection of State Information Bill: are its apparent limitations of Section 32 rights reasonable and justifiable? Large sections of it, I contend, are eminently reasonable and justifiable.

The ANC derives its mandate from and respects the will of all the people, both black and white and will not do anything to undermine the will of the people. While there were (and there may still be some) South Africans within and outside the progressive movement who may have some concerns we wish to advise that there are some global forces that have been (and still are) seeking to manipulate public opinion in order to impose a neo-imperialist agenda on South African people.

These global forces operate from one of the universities in the Western Cape. This organisation claims to be a 10 million member organisation operating out of 14 countries. Its stated objective is to impose what they call a global value system. The organisation distributed the telephone numbers and e-mails of the offices of the leader of government business and the whippery to the public and urged them to flood these offices with protest letters and to phone their offices ceaselessly to mount the pressure on the ANC to abandon the Bill in the interest of a global agenda which has nothing to do with the interests of South Africa and its people.

We are not suggesting that all South Africans who have raised (or who still raise concerns) are manipulated by global or neo-imperialist forces; we are merely suggesting that South Africans should continue, if they so desire, to make constructive criticisms and put our national interest, and not global interests first. We have no doubt that the overwhelming majority of our people have throughout seen the intentions of these detractors and are ready to support the ANC positions.

The debates and consultations on the Protection of Information Bill reawakened us to the reality that nature allows no vacuum and that unless we remain in dynamic contact and communication with communities our detractors will step in and create a social distance between our people and us. We need to close ranks by ensuring that our policy sub-committees at the National, Provincial, Regional and Local levels are functional and direct policy implementation within the executive and legislative branch of government as the ANC is the strategic political centre.

On its part the legislative sector must create mechanisms for the co-ordination and integration of legislative programmes to ensure that ANC deployees in the executive and legislative branches of government sing from the same hymn book to give effect to the Polokwane resolutions and our priorities which were endorsed by both the overwhelming majority of our peoples and our activist parliament.

To this end caucus has endorsed the institutionalisation of the inter-parliamentary caucuses, regional and local people's assemblies that were used effectively in the run up to the passage of the Protection of Information Bill. These are effective mechanisms for reconnecting and engaging with our people in a sustainable manner to prevent a social distance between the masses and us.

>> Mathole Motshekga is an ANC NEC member and Chief Whip of the Majority Party in the National Assembly. This article first appeared in ANC Today, the weekly online newsletter of the African National Congress.

Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter