STATEMENT BY FORMER NEWSPAPER EDITORS ON THE PROPOSED STATUTORY COUNCIL AND PROTECTION OF INFO BILL

Three former newspaper editors, who each spent decades opposing press censorship in the apartheid era, today issued a joint statement on the issue for the first time in 20 years. They said:

Leaders of the freedom-fighting ANC, of the grand young UDM, and all stalwarts who opposed apartheid will remember that it is almost 20 years to the day that the Press in South Africa was able to declare itself free at last. Yet there are signs now that all media may be under dire threat once more. The threat is naïve, but dangerous.  It appears to come in an uninformed attack by a few legislators who don't like criticism.

Not one, but two separate anti-freedom weapons are coming out of a corner of President Zuma's Cabinet.

The first is the Protection of Information Bill which - even if shorn of its follies and evil - will remain a serious threat to freedom of information.

This kind of law will almost certainly be used at some stage as a blunt instrument by some demagogues proclaiming their love of democracy. They will find a mosquito on the pretty face of Freedom, and use this form of legislation as a sledgehammer to kill it. Then they will accuse the splattered mosquito of the murder of our heroine.

Freedom is killed that way in most dictatorial states.

We've seen it all before. And, under Apartheid, many times.

But even worse is the second blunt instrument being forged by our democratic government:- a proposal to create an "independent" authority to discipline the media and stop "unfair" criticism.

We choose to believe that the ANC and SACP are proposing this out of ignorance of the lessons of the past.

All should be aware that successive apartheid governments tried to enforce this blatant form of popular censorship no less than eight times in 48 years - and failed every time, simply because the device, in  every form, is too blatant and utterly crude.

If any legislators do not understand why this is so, they can easily find out from any of South Africa's independent institutions and universities whose mission it is to uphold professional standards of journalism.

The friendly advice which anti-press government members need at this early stage is: "Don't do it".

Don't do it, because the inferences in the Info Bill, and the setting up of an uncalled for legal authority to oversee media 'excesses' will injure democracy and besmirch the name of South Africa.

These acts, especially the appointment of such a statutory body, will mark the first step onto a dark and evil path. Together they will more than cancel out all the international goodwill SA earned through hosting the World Cup.

Pause and think for a moment how the entire world's free media will, with real justification, react. The proposal in itself creates an ominous precedent. If it succeeds it could cause history to leave a black mark against its individual perpetrators and against the current ANC and its Alliance. In the meantime all South Africa may suffer because of it.

For the sake of everyone, and in the name of democracy and freedom, please don't even begin to try to do it.

Statement issued by Harvey Tyson (ex-Editor-in-chief The Star, former member of International Press Institute, and board member of the former Argus Company); Rex Gibson (ex-Editor of the Rand Daily Mail); and, Richard Steyn (ex-Editor-in-chief  The Star, The Witness and member of International Press Institute), July 26 2010

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