Nicholas Dawes: A grotesque law that must be rejected in the name of freedom

It sounds alarmist so soon after the warm glow of World Cup achievement but South Africa is on the cusp of a choice that will determine our trajectory for decades. The governing ANC can opt for the vigour and openness that characterise free societies, or it can begin to close down the awkward, plural voices that enrich our democracy but sometimes discomfit those in power.

With the proposed introduction of statutory regulation of the press and legislation that would dramatically curtail freedom of information, the party and the government it leads is opting clearly for the latter course. At the moment it is the press that is braced for the onset of unseasonable storms, but the chill ultimately will settle across our entire society.

The Protection of Information Bill could be more aptly named: the Protection of Government Officials and Cronies. The legislation allows state officials to classify, in the fashion usually reserved for military secrets, just about anything that goes on inside the government.

Anyone who seeks to look behind this veil by leaking, for example, a document proving corruption in state procurement, is subject to a jail term ranging from three to 25 years. Indeed, a journalist, civic activist, perhaps even a member of parliament in receipt of such information, is liable for the same criminal penalties.

It is a grotesque law. That weather front has already made landfall. In the end, it may be up to the constitutional court to review, and hopefully reject it.

Lurking a little further offshore are the gathering clouds of the ANC's proposals for statutory regulation of the print media, which it argues is still dominated by white owners, and a liberal individualism that undermines the party's project of social transformation.

Buffeted by internal battles which are played out in the press, and by regular exposés of corruption and hypocrisy, the party wants a Media Appeals Tribunal appointed by parliament to adjudicate in complaints against the press, and to hand down stiff penalties. The current system of self-regulation by a press ombudsman and the courts, the party argues, is inadequate. No one is arguing that our media are unimpeachable. We make mistakes and we are entangled at times in the battles on which we are supposed to be reporting.

But in the press ombudsman and the courts we already have robust oversight. To hand custody of journalistic ethics to men and women who owe their jobs to politicians is to introduce censors in the guise of commissars of standards.

It is the glory of South Africa's transition that it relies on a plurality of institutions to keep it on a democratic path. A free press is critical to that muddled, incremental, but ultimately thrilling progress. To turn away from that path now is to make a larger choice that strikes at our most cherished freedoms, and imperils our progress. We need to say no, loudly, and clearly, with the voices that we still have, and so does everyone who feels that South Africa's liberation was also theirs.

The writer is the editor-in-chief of South Africa's 'Mail & Guardian' newspaper