The Secrecy Bill will apply to 1001 organisations, including the Joburg Zoo

The Right2Know Campaign has insisted time and again that the Protection of Information Bill (the Secrecy Bill) is outrageously wide-reaching, allowing all organs of state to make their affairs secret.

Until now it has not even been clear how many organisations could be categorised as an ‘organ of state’.

Today, a report tabled by Idasa revealed a list of 1,001 organisations that would fall under the Secrecy Bill’s draconian clauses because they are defined as ‘organs of state’. This includes national, provincial and local government departments, state-owned enterprises and public entities, universities, and organisations that receive state funding.

Among them are many bodies ludicrously irrelevant to our ‘national security’: the William Humphreys Art Gallery, the Natal Sharks Board, and the Johannesburg Zoo.

However not all bodies are so clearly inappropriate to have such powers. The 41-page list also includes bodies where public oversight should be a basic consideration, such as ESKOM and the Independent Electoral Commission, as well as all government departments whose core business should be service delivery to the public.

The Right2Know’s 7-point Freedom Test – a list of drastic amendments that must be made to rid the Bill of its odious secrecy clauses – makes it clear that the Bill must have the narrowest possible applications; secrecy must be limited to strictly defined national security matters, and only within state security bodies such as defence and intelligence agencies. Most importantly, even the state security bodies’ ability to make secrets should be tempered with independent oversight.

The Idasa report has been distributed to members of the committee dealing with the Secrecy Bill, including the chairperson, Cecil Burgess. Mr Burgess had previously dismissed calls for that information to be compiled, saying it would be like “counting grains of sand in the Sahara desert”. Did Mr Burgess truly feel this basic information was not crucial to his committee’s deliberations?

“This latest revelation is further proof that the Secrecy Bill’s provisions are ludicrously broad. With 1,001 bodies listed as organs of state, this Bill will apply to everything under the sun,” says Mark Weinberg, national coordinator of the Right2Know Campaign. “If this Bill goes through, we’ll have NIA agents running around the Johannesburg Zoo.”

For comment, please contact:
Sithembile Mbete, R2K advocacy coordinator: 083 686 2554