South Africa

2010

  
Protesters taped their mouths shut to oppose the Protection of Information Bill. (Imke van Heerden)

South Africans end week of “secrecy bill” protests

On Wednesday, just before South African lawmakers were scheduled to debate amendments to the controversial Protection of Information Bill, thousands of protesters marched to the gates of Parliament in Cape Town to oppose the measure, which they called an “apartheid-style secrecy bill.” The marchers represented a broad coalition of media, academia, trade unions and civil…

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South African journalists protest media restrictions on the nation's annual Day of Media Freedom. (Independent Newspapers Cape)

In South Africa, echoes of Black Wednesday

On October 19, 1977, South Africa’s government banned The World newspaper, along with Weekend World, the paper’s weekly magazine, and Pro Veritate, a Christian publication. Authorities also detained scores of activists and outlawed 17 anti-apartheid groups during the one-day crackdown, which came to be known as Black Wednesday.

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Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe addresses reporters. (AFP)

South Africa weighs dropping media tribunal plan

For the first time in South Africa’s months-long debate over the proposal for a government-run media appeals tribunal, a top official from the African National Congress (ANC) indicated on Friday that the plan could be dropped altogether–under certain conditions.

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Uganda's Yoweri Museveni, left, South Africa's Jacob Zuma, and Nigeria's Goodluck Jonathan at this summer's African Union Summit in Kampala. (AFP/Marc Hofer)

With media plan, ANC copies Nigeria’s military rulers

While South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) discusses the party’s proposal for a media appeals tribunal, delegates should take note of a landmark ruling in Nigeria this year in which a High Court judge declared a government-dominated press council unconstitutional. 

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Dasar (Clifford Derrick)

Somali journalist lives under threat, in fear in South Africa

Violence has cut through the life of 28-year-old journalist Abdulahi Ibrahim Dasar, from his high school days in Kismayo, the third-largest city in Somalia, to his life as a refugee in South Africa. The turbulence of Dasar’s life also explains his entry into journalism, a profession that has made him a target of assassination by…

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President Khama has not been a friend to the media. (Reuters)

Why South Africa’s media fight matters to Botswana

For Batswana journalists, news that their South African colleagues are busy warding off a proposed statutory media tribunal from the ruling African National Congress sounds all too familiar. For more than a decade, the government of Botswana has been trying to push a media law that would effectively shift the whole media under state control.This was eventually…

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The Right2Know campaign opposes the government's secrecy bill. (Ghalib Galant)

South Africans rally against ‘secrecy bill’

Cape Town’s St George’s Cathedral, a rallying point for civil rights action during apartheid, was the site of the public launch on Tuesday of a mass campaign aimed at stopping a secrecy bill seen as a major threat to South Africans’ hard-won freedom.

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Sammy Mbau (CPJ)

A lesson for South African media: Look to Kenya

The chorus of voices opposing the South African government’s proposed Protection of Information Bill and state-backed ombudsman continue to grow. South Africa’s Business Day estimates the press produces three articles per day opposing what many journalists see as an attempt by the ruling party to muzzle investigative reporting. More than 30 editors from major papers published protest messages…

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Presidents Mugabe and Zuma at this month's SADC summit. (EPA)

ANC plans taint Southern Africa’s press freedom leader

As heads of state gathered last week at the summit of the Southern African Development Community, or SADC, in Namibia, their discussions were dominated by the progress of Zimbabwe’s precarious power-sharing political agreement, which includes pledges to address a repressive media environment. Leading the mediation in the Zimbabwean crisis has been neighboring South Africa, which…

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President Zuma in parliament. (AP/Nic Bothma)

In South Africa, a new struggle for press freedom

The South African media is facing its fiercest battle yet with the country’s ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), over the boundaries of freedom of expression in the 16-year-old democracy. On August 8, 37 senior members of the media issued a declaration decrying recent moves on the part of the ANC to potentially restrict…

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2010