Protection of information from whom?

At his Loftvus Versfeld birthday celebrations on Saturday, Nelson Mandela called upon members of the ANC not to celebrate the life of an individual but rather the organisation itself and its achievements after a prolonged struggle. Madiba went on to make further heartfelt pleas for party unity and a strengthening of our democracy in the interests of all South Africans.

This came against the backdrop of ANC president Jacob Zuma’s trial for corruption due to start on Monday, and President Thabo Mbeki’s spokespersons confirming that he has nothing to hide and saying that if anyone has anything on the president, they must step forward.

So the Sunday Times did and then some.

It reports that a UK risk specialist consultancy alleges that Mbeki was paid R30-million by a German shipbuilder to secure a contract for submarines, R2-million of which was paid over to JZ.

Of course at this stage these are merely allegations but they will throw an enormous amount of oil on the fire that is burning brightly in our country at present.

As I have been saying, the time has come for Mbeki and Zuma to be given amnesty and the country to be allowed the political certainty that it desperately needs. We can no longer keep kicking this one under the carpet because the old rug’s about to catch fire.

The amnesty, as I have said, must be negotiated with the opposition parties who must build in safeguards for our future. The first is that the media’s freedom is guaranteed in terms of the Constitution, with a built-in 90% voting requirement to tamper with the Constitution or any legislation concerned with media freedom. In terms of the protection of information Bill being proposed, we are seeing the government’s idea of good governance — the same old shenanigans, but this time we don’t get to hear about them.

Protection of whom? The public’s protection relies on information of the government’s misdemeanours. Where there are genuine state secrets, the mechanisms to protect them are already in place. Where the government is being naughty, that is not a secret. It is an item of news that must be brought into the public domain so we can deal with it and move on. This proposed bill must be scrapped.

New safeguards are needed to protect the organs of state against government interference. No longer should a president or any of his ministers have a say in the prosecution of crime. Their oversight must relate to checking that these entities are run properly but without any say in which prosecutions are conducted, or how. In terms of the judiciary, while the government and everyone else is free to criticise it, there can be no mechanism to touch the judiciary in any way save internally by itself.

In this regard the heads of the police and other state organisations should run for elections outside party politics and owe their jobs to South Africans and not the government. The same goes for the judiciary. In the cases of all of these state organs, discipline and monitoring must be done by bodies independent of the government and themselves.

In addition to the media freedom and independence of state organs, the government and the ANC must hold out an olive branch to the Scorpions. It’s not their fault they are just too good at fighting crime. An apology to the police for using them to fight the Scorpions in a political squabble might also be long overdue.

The Mbeki and Zuma amnesty in return for safeguarding our democracy would unite the party, eliminate political uncertainty and lift the mood of the whole country.

Think about it.