A CLASSIC EXAMPLE of the threats our putative open society
faces played out last week – Sakina Kamwendo, talkshow host on the SABC’s Metor
FM, was censored, raising a rightful storm of protest. The incident would have
saddened – but not surprised – former Chief Justice Arthur Chaskalson.
‘Constitutions are written for the future,’ he said. ‘One of
the lessons of history is that rights are vulnerable, and when governments come
under stress there is a temptation to brush rights aside, to secure their goals
and entrench their power.’ He said that he had often before warned against the
erosion of rights and of checks and balances. ‘The first steps to that end,’ he
said, ‘are particularly dangerous, for if allowed to pass without objection,
they open the way for a political culture in which this is treated as
acceptable. ‘There are signs that this is what is happening in our country.’
(Carmel Rickard, paying tribute to Arthur Chaskalson, 2 December 2012.
In one short week we lost both Professor Jakes Gerwel and
Chaskalson. One by one, the members of the immense generation that fought
apartheid are slipping through our fingers, and with them, a huge heritage is
being lost.
The heritage is one of knowledge: a knowledge of both the
fragility and the preciousness of our rights. A knowledge of how necessary it
is, constantly and urgently, to defend those rights. A knowledge of the tactics
used by repressive governments to exploit loopholes we allow to develop in our
rights. An intimate knowledge of the tactics citizens can use to fight back.
Back in 2003, I wrote to an American friend facing threats
to the open society following 9/11: don’t allow them to dilute your rights, I
said; in South Africa, we’ve lived without them, you are so used to simply
accepting that you have them that you may think it is a fair price to pay for
security, but it’s not. If you don’t object vociferously when the first laws
are passed, the ones that don’t actually impinge on you, you will find your
right to protest defanged and your voice silenced when they attack a right that
DOES matter to you.
Remember? “First they came for the communists, and I didn't
speak out because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the socialists, and
I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist. Then they came for the trade
unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they
came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.”
(Pastor Martin Niemöller, the text approved by the
Martin-Niemöller-Foundation)
But now I wonder if many South Africans – especially those
without painful personal knowledge of repression – have lost touch with that
heightened sense of the value of our rights. The generation represented by
Chaskalson (who was 81 when he died) and Gerwel (66) was a grand and fortunate
set of people who lived through fear and trial by fire, but were also alive to
see the dawn of a new day in which our rights were secured to us by a wonderful
constitution.
Unfortunately, Chaskalson also saw the current government
ram the Protection of State Information Bill through the National Council of
Provinces ad hoc committee – one of those ‘first steps’ of which he spoke. We
are soothingly told by spokesperson Moloto Mathapo that this is not a ‘media
bill’, that it’s not about covering up corruption but about balancing
“classification of sensitive State information in the interest of national
security with openness and transparency”.
Yeah, and maybe, just maybe you really mean that. Maybe,
just maybe, the crop of people in government at present will be cautious and
will carefully consider the good of the public (who are their employers, after
all) in any actions based on this act. But will future governments?
Once these things become part of law, an accepted legal
backdrop, they will be used to the nth degree – look at the history of the Nats
in this country, and repressive regimes all over the world. (As an example of
how broadly worded laws can be used in a most repressive way, consider the case
of Ivan Moseyev, a 54-year-old Russian who’s been collecting folk tales and
compiling a dictionary of the Arctic Pomor people, descendants of Norwegian
trappers, with financial grants from Norway. He’s facing charges of high
treason under a law which defines espionage as including “furnishing financial,
material, technical, consultative or other help to a foreign state, or
international or foreign organisation”.)
If you think this is all beside the point – you just want to
get on with living your life and doing business, after all – think again.
Transparency and openness are critical to economic life as
much as to political life. Wherever
secrecy and deceit are allowed to breed, they spill over into all of life,
affecting the conditions in which we live and work.
Repressive laws can also be used to control business – if a
time comes when a government feels the need to do so. So it behoves us all – in
our own interests and in the interests of future generations – to become
active, engaged citizens who are willing to take up the cudgels and lobby,
advocate, protest, do whatever is necessary to create a society which is more
rather than less open. Start by protesting censorship at the public
broadcaster!
- Fin24
*Mandi Smallhorne is a freelance journalist. The views expressed are her own.
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