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Chairperson
Distinguished participants:

I have the pleasure to welcome you all to this fir Consultative Workshop on the proposed Act which will spell out the parameters and procedures enabling the public to gain access to information held by public bodies.

I am informed that, in line with the government's commitment to openness and consultation, as well as its determination to break with the past when laws were deliberately wrongly named in order to mislead, the name of this Act is also subject to open debate.

As you know, the Interim Constitution provides for the right of the citizenry to information. In keeping with the philosophy on governance that led to the inclusion of this clause in the Constitution and to give effect to that provision, it is necessary that parliament should enact the necessary legislation as soon as possible.

We say this to emphasise that the Government has no desire whatsoever to delay the process of the passage of this Act. We are, on the contrary, very keen that the law should be passed as soon as possible.

I however believe that we will also be of the one mind that we should engage in as extensive a process of consultation as possible to ensure that the legislation should reflect as broad a national consensus as possible.

The speed with which we should move to promulgate and enact this legislation is, I believe, one of the matters that you might wish to consider during the course of this workshop.

Another is the composition of the task force that has been charged with the task of leading the process of preparing for the drafting of the freedom of information legislation.

I am very happy to commend this outstanding team, which, as you know, is led by Advocate Mojanku Gumbi. Concern has however been raised that the people drawn from the various sectors of society, such as the media, should also be included.

We have absolutely no problem about this, provided that the people who might be drawn in do not come into the task force to represent special interests. They can be brought in to ensure that it has the capacity to be fully comprehensive in terms of its intellectual outreach. This is another matter which you might wish to consider during the course of the workshop.

We have also been informed that reservations have been expressed about the participation of the South African Communication Service in this exercise. I fully understand the reasons that have led to the adoption and expression of this position.

I would however like to appeal for a certain measure of tolerance. The origins, composition and the consequent limitations of SACS are known to all of us, including those of us who have, in the past, been victims of its activities.

This department of state, like all others, is subject to change. It can therefore have no power to dictate to the new society we are all trying to build. Least of all can it have the capacity to manipulate the Gumbi Task Force on freedom of information.

The matter of bringing SACS into the new democratic order has to be addressed in both a bold and sensitive manner. This we shall do, in keeping with the broad perspective of creating a government information service that must serve the objective of open and accountable government.

The fact that SACS provides supporting secretarial services to the Task Force should not become a diversion which leads us to a peripheral skirmish around an issue that is, for our present purposes, in reality peripheral.

In the first instance, the exercise in which we are all engaged has to do with ensuring the fullest possible access of the citizen to information that is in the hands of the government.

We are however going through a period in human history when fundamental questions have to be answered.

These questions bear on such matters as the meaning of good governance and the role of the individual in increasingly centralised societies.

They relate to such issues as decision-making in a situation characterised by an explosion of information and how to cope with an interdependent world, in which the concept of a self-contained nation state is becoming an outdated anachronism.

I say all this to make the point that in considering a freedom of information act for South Africa, we are also addressing more global issues which are of concern to and have an impact on a wider world that stretches far beyond the mere geographic confines of the Democratic Republic of South Africa.

All humanity will therefore be watching what we do, in the knowledge that we have the challenge and capability to break new ground in terms of elaborating rules and regulations that have to do with the struggle to establish a new way of living.

With regard to this, we can succeed or fail. Whether we succeed or fail depends on what you do. The rest of us will join in an offensive to ensure that you do not lead us down the path of failure.

Some of what I have said should, I hope, also enhance general understanding that we should break out of a particularly restrictive mental framework.

This framework sees our forthcoming freedom of information act as the expression of a desperate struggle between a secretive, manipulative, corrupt and repressive governmental power on the one hand and a public that is uniquely, and contrary to government intentions, interested in genuine democracy, transparency, freedom for the individual and good governance, on the other.

I can state this very firmly, that no such dichotomy exists between our government and the public at large.

If we manage to break loose from this narrow conception, we will then be able to deal with the larger question of how we ensure that we have an informed, active and engaged citizenry that would both be an expression of the kind of society we are trying to create and an instrument for the creation of such a society.

This must surely oblige us to answer the question - what access does the public need to which information, in order to achieve the objective of empowering the individual to participate in governance in the modern world!

The Task Force has there legitimately raised the contentious question of access to information held by private bodies which exercise public power.

I would like to urge you to be of sufficient courage not to avoid grappling with this matter, whatever the resistance and opposition you might experience from vested interests, which might be legally defined as private bodies.

There are a few more questions that I would like to raise which I am certain you will have to consider.

One of these is that the conduct of public and, indeed, private affairs, is not possible without a measure of confidentiality and secrecy. We must, together, answer the question - what matters should be subject to such confidentiality and secrecy clauses!

It is not necessary for us to emphasise the importance and complexity of this particular subject. I know you will treat it with the seriousness it deserves.

Accordingly, we must not lose the opportunity to create a more permanent order by allowing our intentions to be compromised by a reckless resort to a populist stance, inspired by the desire for the mass applause we can evoke today, and the legitimate urge to pry open the closets of our apartheid past.

We must consider the question of the financial and opportunity cost and the impact on efficiency of the implementation of a freedom of information act.

The full financial and other material implications of the implementation of such an act must be aired so that both the public at large and the legislature should be aware that, with regard to this matter as well, there are difficult choices that will have to be made.

Related to this is the question of creating the best possible circumstances for the general public, ad not merely the social elite's, to take advantage of the possibilities of access to information that the Act will open up.

One of the most important issues to consider in this regard is the matter of the low literacy levels of precisely the sectors of our society which need a freedom of information act.

This bears also on the levels of deprivation which make it impossible for the majority of our population to draw on such specialist assistance as might be provided by lawyers or even elected representatives.

Both these latter issues might serve to bring to the fore the need for the building of a representative non-governmental capacity to assist the general public to exercise the freedom that will become available as a result of the freedom of information provisions of the Constitution and the legislation that will give expression to this freedom.

Also of importance to this workshop is the question of incentives to encourage bureaucratic machineries to co-operate in the implementation of the Act, as well as sanctions to discourage subversion of the intentions of the law.

In the end we should all be united by a common commitment to create the institutions and define the processes which will serve to expand the frontiers of liberty, human fulfilment and individual empowerment.

A freedom of information act will be one of the foundations on which such a society will be built. Such an act should not be viewed merely as a negative act to constrain the possibility of bad governance.

It should be approached as a positive act which has to do with the objective of giving the people an inalienable possibility to improve their lives and thereby allow for these masses to gain the revolutionary power to impact on their capacity to better their lives on a continuous basis, regardless of the particular party that might be in power.

When those who had the power said - Let there be light! - this was not only to abolish darkness. It was also to shed light so that all could move forward in a conscious and purposive manner.

Let what you do also contribute to ensuring that the people as a whole gain access to knowledge so that they have the power to reconstruct and develop their lives and their society in an informed, conscious and purposive manner.

I trust that what the Government will do as a result of this Act and as a result of its commitment to the full and proper empowerment of the people through access to information and knowledge, will also communicate a message to the media that it, too, has a responsibility to inform on an all-round basis, and not predominantly to proceed from the understanding that news is news to the extent that it is confined to the negative, controversial and conflict-ridden.

I am certain that you will discharge your responsibilities of helping to empower the people through access to information, with due diligence, imagination and seriousness.

I wish you fruitful deliberations.

Thank you.