BRYAN ROSTRON: Secrecy Bill is more of a ‘Spook’s Charter’

The following article was published online by the BusinessDay

THE “public interest” is a term that has been much in the news lately, first with Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World bugging scandal, then closer to home with the contentious Protection of Information Bill.

THE “public interest” is a term that has been much in the news lately, first with Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World bugging scandal, then closer to home with the contentious Protection of Information Bill. In its race to finalise this law, the African National Congress (ANC) has fluctuated wildly, one day breathing fire, the next retreating in the face of opposition.The ruling party is still stalling, however, on the crucial aspect of a “public interest” defence for publishing classified information. This ill-conceived legislation has been dubbed the Secrecy Bill, but as it stands it might more accurately be called a Spook’s Charter.

Former intelligence minister Ronnie Kasrils has pointed out there is no mention of intelligence agents who manufacture and spread false information. “Given the scandalous abuse of state resources for political purposes in recent years,” he wrote, “this is an astonishing omission.”

The fact is that many internal ANC battles have revolved around claims of “ç”. In 2001, Cyril Ramaphosa, Mathews Phosa and Tokyo Sexwale were named as conspirators in an imaginary “plot” based on farcical intelligence reports. One of the main reasons for Thabo Mbeki ’s fall from the presidency is that he was believed to have manipulated state agencies in his power struggles with rivals. This underhand battle of the spooks continues. Last April, Sexwale was again fingered as “plotting” in a ham- fisted report by the head of crime intelligence, who was shortly afterwards arrested on a murder charge.

The current head of the secret services, Mo Shaik, made a fool of himself when he and former transport minister Mac Maharaj claimed that Bulelani Ngcuka, then head of the National Prosecuting Authority, had been an apartheid spy. Ngcuka, of course, had stated there was prima facie evidence of corruption on the part of (then deputy president) Jacob Zuma . Shaik and Maharaj even made public what Ngcuka’s spy designation is alleged to have been: RS452. This was later revealed to have been the code for a white, female informer. Nevertheless, like Mo Shaik, Maharaj was brought in from the cold by Zuma, being named as his spokesman last month.

As the Protection of Information Bill stands, if a newspaper were to obtain documents which exposed a similar farrago of defamation and errors, the ANC insists that even possession, let alone publication, of such documents would be a crime. The documents must simply be handed back to the authorities. The minister or security chief, who may themselves have been involved in such illegal and undemocratic shenanigans, would thus be in a position to keep the whole mess secret.

There is clearly a double standard here. In 2009, Zuma only escaped facing fraud and corruption charges because of illegally leaked National Intelligence Agency tapes.

No one in the so-called intelligence community has ever been charged with leaking the tapes — even though it led to dramatic “regime change” in the country. Yet any journalist who received leaked information that revealed such criminal activity, and the subsequent cover-up, would be tried and imprisoned.

It is not always easy to pin down “the public interest”. Murdoch’s tabloid editors tend to define that as anything the public is interested in: say, a supermodel suffering from bulimia. How do they know the public is interested in this? Because such tittle-tattle sells millions of copies of their newspapers.

That is clearly different from a definition of “public interest”, which might include information about the actual running of the government and vital matters that shape our democracy.

These distinctions need to be argued over and specific definitions agreed on. Equally important, and currently far more pressing for SA, exactly the same standard of rigour should apply to any legislation that could be exploited to gag the press. The repeated abuse of intelligence reports proves that what may be in the factional interests of power-mongers is not at all in the public interest.

In the light of this, and the fact that the ANC faces no significant electoral challenge for the foreseeable future, it can seriously be suggested that political battles to decide who will lead SA may continue to be decided not by the ballot but by illicit bugging and selective intelligence leaks.

That is not remotely in the public interest and its exposure must be protected by law.

Source BD