Big things have been happening in South Africa since Bob went there last month. On November 10, the ruling ANC party suspended its high-profile young firebrand, Julius Malema, for five years. Then this past Tuesday—labeled "Black Tuesday" by protestors—Parliament passed the Protection of State Information Bill, which will allow the government to imprison anyone who discloses state secrets for up 25 years. The bill lacks any clause to protect whistleblowers who disclose secrets in the public interest.

Many South Africans are saying the new secrecy bill marks the "death of democracy" in South Africa. The bill has not killed South Africa's democracy, yet. But it is a malignant cancer and that could eventually be fatal to South Africa's constitution and democracy. The ruling ANC party is moving against the press, which it sees as a white-controlled impediment to the party's continued rule. The ANC does not value the numerous corruption scandals uncovered by the press in the 17 years since the end of apartheid nor does it see the media as a valid force to hold the government accountable.

The new legislation and the recent appointment of a questionable Supreme Court chief justice show that President Jacob Zuma is working to dismantle, piece by piece, South Africa's hard won democracy.

I checked in with five of the guests who contributed to Bob's South Africa stories, which appeared on our October 21st episode, to see what they have to say about the new bill.

Andrew Meldrum, Deputy Managing Editor and Africa Editor for GlobalPost

(in an email to OTM)

Many South Africans are saying the new secrecy bill marks the "death of democracy" in South Africa. The bill has not killed South Africa's democracy, yet. But it is a malignant cancer and that could eventually be fatal to South Africa's constitution and democracy. The ruling ANC party is moving against the press, which it sees as a white-controlled impediment to the party's continued rule. The ANC does not value the numerous corruption scandals uncovered by the press in the 17 years since the end of apartheid nor does it see the media as a valid force to hold the government accountable.

The new legislation and the recent appointment of a questionable Supreme Court chief justice show that President Jacob Zuma is working to dismantle, piece by piece, South Africa's hard won democracy.

Zapiro, cartoonist for The Mail & Guardian and The Times

(in cartoons published on Tuesday and Wednesday)

©2011 Zapiro All Rights Reserved | Printed with permission from www.zapiro.com.

William Bird, Director of Media Monitoring Africa

(From an MMA press release on Tuesday titled "Secrecy Bill: Bad for the Country, Worse for South Africa’s International Reputation")

We call on President Zuma and the African National Congress to follow through on their pledge of a fully public and consultative process on this Bill. While civil society . . . has stated its willingness to challenge the Bill at the Constitutional Court, we believe it is not too late for President Zuma to ensure the Bill can pass constitutional muster. We call on President Zuma to send the Bill back for revision. ...

On September 20 of this year, President Zuma was one of the world's first signatories to the global Open Government initiative. In his opening remarks, President Zuma said, "Open government in the South African case is premised on our progressive and transformative Constitution which enshrines a Bill of Rights and the principles of open governance." We challenge the President, and the South African government, to live up to his words, and the spirit of our Constitution, and to fight the growing culture of secrecy. ...

Evita Bezuidenhout, the most famous white woman in South Africa

(from her Twitter feed)

Eusebius McKaiser, political analyst at the Wits Centre for Ethics

(from a guest letter to Southern Africa Report on Thursday titled "The Info Bill: a curse on both your houses")

The real question is whether the details in the Bill achieve a balance between, on the one hand, capacitating the state to keep us safe from foreign and other national security threats and, on the other, not overstepping the bounds of reasonable infringement on our fundamental rights such as press freedom, access to information, and so on. It is here that critics of the Bill are on stronger ground. ...

It is wrong to claim that this Bill spells the end of media freedom. Some in the media dubbed the day on which the Bill was passed “Black Tuesday” to evoke in South Africans painful memories of apartheid days when newspapers were censored, journalists thrown in jail and media outlets shut down. This comparison is both exaggerated and counterproductive. ...

That does not mean . . . that all media will be safe from the Bill’s reach. The Bill seeks to criminalise the possession and distribution of classified information. This means that investigative journalists might now think twice before publishing stories about wrongdoing. This “chilling effect” is bad for media freedom, and ultimately bad for participatory democracy since the media provides information to ordinary citizens. 

The key point, however, is that the public debate ought to have focused on more than media freedom. At times, some journalists and some media houses did so – but for the most part it was a self-reflexive exercise rather than a discussion about what is at stake for our democracy overall. Much of Tuesday’s news coverage, for example, across media outlets, framed the Bill’s passage in terms of the consequences for newsrooms. The poor remained invisible. ...

Given the ANC majority in Parliament, the Bill will no doubt become law soon.  It has a number of weaknesses still but chief among these is the lack of a public-interest defence clause. Critics imply that such a clause is constitutionally compulsory. It is not. But such a clause would certainly help ensure that when, say, whistleblowers put classified information in the public space, they do not go to jail if they can demonstrate they did so in the public interest. ...