DA to petition President Zuma to send Secrecy Bill back to Parliament  

Note to editors: These are the remarks delivered by DA Parliamentary Leader, Lindiwe Mazibuko MP, during the Protection of State Information Bill debate in Parliament today. 

Honourable Speaker,

Honourable Members,

Two years ago, on that now infamous ‘Black Tuesday', this House sent a message to South Africa that the freedoms won by those who came before us can never be taken for granted.

In a glaring assault on our Constitution, the ANC, with iron-fisted determination, pushed through a bill that would kill transparency, boost corruption and fundamentally undermine freedom of expression.

It was a defining point in our democracy. We could either sit idly by while our freedoms were undermined. Or we could fight in defence of our Constitution.

If ever we were unsure whether our democracy could sustain an attack of this magnitude from the governing party, our collective message was clear.

Outside the gates of Parliament, a coalition of civil society movements, the media and South African citizens were unrelenting in bringing pressure to beat on Parliament, to ensure that this Bill be brought in line with the Constitution.

Inside this House, members from the opposition, including the Honourable Dene Smuts, Honourable David Maynier, Honourable Mario Ambrosini and Honourable Steve Swart refused to back down in the face of this assault. They fought, day in and day out, to roll back the worst of this bill. And in the NCOP, the Honourable Alf Lees and Honourable Darryl Worth kept the pressure up.

It was a coalition in defence of our Constitution. It was a coalition that South Africans will look back on in our history books and honour.

But Mr Speaker, our fight did not end there. While our efforts changed some of the worst aspects of the bill, the Protection of State Information Bill that was passed this year remained inconsistent with the Constitution.

The definition of national security remained too broad. This means that the state could still infringe on people's right to access information and undermine the constitutionally-enshrined principle of freedom of expression.

The bill still dealt with a category of information which had nothing to do with security or classification, called "valuable information". This allows the State Security Minister to make regulations with respect to what is ordinary government record-keeping. This is, in our view, an attempt to perpetuate the Minimum Information Security Standards (MISS) system, which is currently only a cabinet policy.

And fundamentally, the bill legislated on what is the provincial government competence of provincial archives.

We therefore maintain that it should have been tagged as a section 76 bill, and not a section 75 bill.

It is for this reason that following the National Assembly vote on the bill, I petitioned the President in terms of section 79 of the Constitution to refer the bill back to Parliament, so that these problems could for once and for all be corrected.

Confronted with these genuine and substantive concerns, and ahead of an election campaign in which his party is already on the back foot, the Honourable President could not simply sign this bill into law - not without at least seeming to care about its constitutionality.

Because when he referred the bill back to this House, he appeared to have done so only to address technical and grammatical problems relating to section 42 and section 45 of the bill. No reference was made to the broad definition on national security. No reference to valuable information. No reference to the incorrect tagging.

Let me clear, the DA fully supports correcting these technical anomalies. It's a shame that the bill was passed with them in the first place.

But there is much more that needs to be fixed. And the Honourable President knows this because I submitted a legal opinion to him which detailed these problems in meticulous detail.

Perhaps this is the reason that, despite established precedent by former President Thabo Mbeki and former President Motlanthe - whose referrals were detailed and clear - President Zuma's referral was vague.

Perhaps this is also why the Honourable President did not respond to my letter requesting that he clarify the terms of his referral; or to my second letter following up on the first.

And perhaps this is why the ANC in the committee refused the Honourable Smuts's request that the Ad Hoc committee seek clarity on the referral from the Honourable President.

Mr Speaker,

The DA will not give up the fight on this bill.

We will not stop until it is brought completely in line with the Constitution. We are not fooled by the public relations tactics of the Presidency.

And the ANC should be ashamed for thinking that South Africa would fall for these tactics.

This is why I will again petition the President in terms of section 79 of the Constitution. This bill must come back to Parliament, and the real, substantive problems with it must be addressed. If that does not happen, the bill will unavoidably end up in the Constitutional Court. And this House, and every member who supported this bill, will be left ashamed.

Because, Honourable Members, a government which supports an Apartheid-era National Key Points Act; which goes to court to prevent investigative reports into Nkandla from being released by the Public Protector; which classifies public documents regardless of the public interest, cannot be given even more power to put secrecy above transparency.

And because, Mr Speaker, a Security Cluster under President Zuma, which is unrelenting in its efforts to advance the cause of secrecy, from Guptagate to Nkandlagate, from Spy Tapes to the proposed appointment of Robert McBride as the Head of IPID, from Marikana to the Arms Deal, should not be given more power to avoid accountability.

Honourable Speaker,

Over the last two years, our coalition in defense of the Constitution has held strong. We must now finish what we set out to achieve: a fully constitutional Protection of State Information Bill.

And we must accept nothing less.

Thank you.

Issued by the DA, November 12 2013

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