Quote of the week
Universal adult suffrage on a common voters roll is one of the foundational values of our entire constitutional order. The achievement of the franchise has historically been important both for the acquisition of the rights of full and effective citizenship by all South Africans regardless of race, and for the accomplishment of an all-embracing nationhood. The universality of the franchise is important not only for nationhood and democracy. The vote of each and every citizen is a badge of dignity and of personhood. Quite literally, it says that everybody counts. In a country of great disparities of wealth and power it declares that whoever we are, whether rich or poor, exalted or disgraced, we all belong to the same democratic South African nation; that our destinies are intertwined in a single interactive polity.
August and Another v Electoral Commission and Others (CCT8/99) [1999] ZACC 3
Democratic Left statement on ANC-SACP pro-Secrecy Bill march
PRESS STATEMENT: RESPONSE TO ANC-SACP-SANCO MARCH IN SUPPORT OF THE SECRECY BILL (THE PROTECTION OF STATE INFORMATION BILL)
The Democratic Left Front (DLF) condemns the ANC, SACP and SANCO for organising a anti-democratic march for today in Cape Town in support of the anti-democratic Secrecy Bill (the Protection of State Information Bill). Despite the fury of the anti-imperialist and revolutionary rhetoric used to justify this march, no democrat of any conviction in South Africa can stand silent whilst the ANC, SACP and SANCO threaten to use their mass power to trample on basic democratic rights to information. This march is the first warning shot in the use of the mass activist base of these organisations as storm-troopers for the authoritarian ruling elite. If ever there was ever a classic example of the extent to which the ANC and the SACP represent authoritarian populism, this march is it. This is typical of Stalinist propaganda that was used by anti-democratic regimes in the past. Today, the ANC and the SACP have created false bogeys of liberals, foreign infiltrators and aggressors, and espionage in order to clamp down on social dissent given their collective failure to transform capitalist South Africa.
The DLF stands unreservedly in full and firm support of the Right to Know Campaign (R2K), COSATU, the SA Human Rights Commission and other progressive organisations in South Africa who remain opposed to the Secrecy Bill. The DLF rejects the spurious allegations made by the ANC, SACP and SANCO in their statement announcing today’s march. The DLF fully endorses the R2K statement issued in response to the ANC-SACP-SANCO statement. The R2K is not dominated by foreign-sponsored NGOs and western-owned media agencies. The R2K is not misleading the public about the class orientation of the media. In fact, the R2K has not only opposed the Secrecy Bill but has also argued and mobilised for truly democratised and diversified media, something which the ANC government has failed to facilitate through the statutory Media Development and Diversity Agency. For all these reasons, the DLF reaffirms its endorsement of the R2K campaign.
The intention of the Secrecy Bill is to stifle the spaces that do exist for access to information and critically informed citizens. The Secrecy Bill is not fundamentally about protection information that threatens the security of ordinary working class South Africans, but about protecting spaces for the ruling elite to continue their plunder of the state. While recent concessions by the ANC have improved the Bill, it will still be extremely difficult, if not impossible to ensure transparency of the most shadowy of all state structures, the security cluster. The grounds for classification of documents, and the definition of national security, still remain overbroad, and will lead to documents that are of considerable public interest and importance being declared secret. The Bill also lacks an adequate public interest/public domain defence in case people come into possession of classified documents, or if they are released into the public domain. This has serious implications for activists, who may come into possession of classified documents exposing abuses of power.
The Secrecy Bill is merely symptoms of a much bigger problem. Jacob Zuma’s ruling elite, which was brought to power by the ANC’s Polokwane conference, is enhancing the coercive capacities of the state, and in the process centralising power in an increasingly unaccountable security cluster. The re-militarisation of the police, which has intensified state violence against protestors, attempts to drive unions out of the military, and the lockdown on transparency and accountability in the Ministry of Defence are also signs of the growing power of Zuma’s securocrats. The DLF fears that unless the growing power of the security cluster is checked, then South Africa may be well on its way to a national security state, which likely to contain growing dissent against service delivery and the capitalist system itself through repression.
FOR COMMENTS, CONTACT:
Brian Ashley – 082 085 7088
Mazibuko K. Jara – 083 651 0271
Ayanda Kota – 078 625 6462
Vishwas Satgar – 082 775 3420
