CPJ welcomes South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s signing into law a bill that abolishes criminal defamation, and urges authorities to reform other problematic laws that threaten press freedom in the country.
On April 3, Ramaphosa signed the Judicial Matters Amendment Act (2023), which includes a provision repealing “the common law relating to the crime of defamation.” The move takes place after decades of advocacy by the press, media lawyers, and civil society activists who argued that there were other remedies that did not involve prosecution or jail, such as civil defamation lawsuits for aggrieved parties who believed their reputations were impugned.
“The long-awaited repeal of the crime of defamation in South Africa is an important victory for press freedom and hopefully will reverberate positively across other parts of the region, such as Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where defamation continues to be used to criminalize journalism,” said Angela Quintal, head of CPJ’s Africa program.
Read more about the situation here.
Global press freedom updates
- Turkish authorities attack, threaten, arrest several journalists during post-election unrest
- CPJ, others welcome Council of Europe recommendations on countering SLAPPs
- CPJ, 27 others urge Bahraini leaders to release journalist Abduljalil Alsingace
- Myanmar jails filmmaker Shin Daewe for life for buying a drone
- Russia issues arrest warrant for exiled journalist Mikhail Zygar; CPJ condemns Russian journalist Igor Kuznetsov’s six-year prison sentence
- At least four Ukrainian journalists injured in consecutive attacks on Ukraine
- Kyrgyzstan releases four Temirov Live journalists; CPJ calls for dropping of charges against all 11
- Georgia ruling party reintroduces “foreign agents” law to parliament
- Guatemalan journalist Jorge Tizol detained while covering police raid
- CPJ calls on Taliban to drop plans to restrict Facebook access in Afghanistan; Exiled Afghan journalist Ahmad Hanayesh shot in Pakistan
- Lesotho courts dismiss lawsuits seeking closure of two newspapers, defamation cases ongoing
- CPJ calls on Jordan to free photojournalist Ahmad Mohsen
- Journalist Ahmed al-Bitawi arrested while covering pro-Gaza march in the West Bank
“MFC Member States your credibility is on the line: we need your meaningful action for the safety of journalists and access to information in Gaza,” CPJ and 41 media freedom organizations wrote to the Media Freedom Coalition, a group of 52 countries that have pledged to protect media freedom at home and abroad.
The letter called out the “collective official silence” of the MFC member states regarding the killings of journalists in Gaza and further warned that this silence seriously diminishes their ability to stand up for media freedom globally.
“Calls for accountability in other situations are no longer credible when those calls are not made now in the face of such human suffering, destruction of media facilities, communication blackouts, arrests and threats that extend to the Occupied West Bank,” the authors write in the statement.
Read the full letter here.
What we are reading
- ‘Unparalleled and unprecedented’ — John Daniszewski, Nieman Reports
- The power of peer support: Helping journalists persevere in the face of online abuse — Susan E. McGregor, Viktorya Vilk, Jeje Mohamed, PEN America
- ‘She really saw into the hearts of people’: The legacy of Anja Niedringhaus — Kyle Almond, CNN
- The trouble with ‘the Global South’ — Comfort Ero, Foreign Affairs