Twenty years after the Windhoek Declaration on press freedom

<strong>the</strong> flow of information and serve to
promote secrecy.
The resort by both governmental and
non-state actors to court interdicts
to prevent publication – mainly of
corruption scandals – has increased
in recent <strong>years</strong>. The identification
of people in divorce actions has
also been stopped because it would
identify <strong>the</strong>ir children.
“Journalists say a
climate of secrecy
has enveloped South
Africa, and that
conditions are far
removed from <strong>the</strong>
heady days <strong>after</strong>
Parliamentary committees sometimes
hold secret hearings while <strong>the</strong>
police have, fortunately infrequently,
improperly excluded <strong>the</strong> media
from certain court cases. President
Jacob Zuma has launched more
than a dozen defamation actions
against <strong>the</strong> media for damages of
R75-million – later reduced to R15million
– which, some say, was done
to intimidate <strong>the</strong> media into selfcensorship.
Journalists say a climate of secrecy
has enveloped South Africa, and that
conditions are far removed from
<strong>the</strong> heady days <strong>after</strong> democracy in
1994 when government officials
were eager to answer questions
and supply information. Now
reporters have difficulty in getting
information from most government
departments, including <strong>the</strong> police.
This approach has extended to journalists
and photographers being arrested
at crime scenes, <strong>the</strong> removal
of images from cameras and sometimes
even a night spent in detention
in a police cell. O<strong>the</strong>r restrictive
practices include a ban on prosecutors
giving information to <strong>the</strong>
media, threats of <strong>the</strong> withdrawal
of official advertising from critical
papers and political interference at
<strong>the</strong> SABC which has included <strong>the</strong>
banning of certain voices and programmes.
Waiting in <strong>the</strong> wings is a plan by <strong>the</strong>
ruling African National Congress to
set up a statutory Media Appeals
Tribunal, and where powers to fine,
or imprison, journalists and impose
heavy fines on newspapers have
been hinted at. This would result
in <strong>the</strong> collapse of <strong>the</strong> voluntary
self-regulatory Press Council and
ombudsman system whose penalties
extend to publication of corrections
and apologies.
democracy in 1994...” “Today’s view of
174 | Media in Africa - 2011
<strong>the</strong> continent is
characterised by
Freedom House as
rating only five of its
53 countries as ‘free’
with a high degree of
transparency, while
<strong>the</strong> rest are ‘partly
free’ or ‘not free’.”
O<strong>the</strong>r countries in Africa have augmented
and frequently bru-talised
<strong>the</strong>se kinds of silencing practices
with jail sentences for publishing
“false news”, invoking “insult laws”,
detentions and arrests, assaults and
assassinations of journalists, banning
of newspapers and radio stations,
censorship at state-owned
media, brutal attacks on media offices
by <strong>the</strong> authorities resulting
in <strong>the</strong> smashing of equipment and
campaigns of vilification against
journalists and publications.
The outcome in many instances is
publishers and journalists being intimidated,
with <strong>the</strong> public being left
in darkness.