Speech by Executive Mayor Alderman Patricia de Lille at
the closing reception of the African and Information and
Media Summit
19 September 2011
Honoured guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Good evening.
It is auspicious that this gathering takes place in a dark time in South
Africa. Indeed, there is a deep irony that your chosen host city for this
incredible gathering may soon play host to a travesty of our democratic
order.
Many of you work in environments where information is jealously
guarded. Indeed, many of you suffer great personal risk to bring
information that helps your societies to the light of day.
You have not been deterred by such risks. You face those dangers headon, armed with a professional and civic duty to speak truth to power.
Many of us who fought for democracy in this country thought that we had
forever dispelled those dangers to truth after 1994.
We faced many challenges in post-apartheid South Africa, but we never
dreamed that the denial of information would be one of them.
I am saddened how quickly some of us have forgotten the principles we
fought for in our struggle to be free.
One of them was the freedom of expression.
We had lived for decades in an environment where government
determined what people could and couldn’t know.
Indeed, perhaps one of the most powerful weapons the apartheid regime
had was secrecy.
The secrecy that masked evictions. The secrecy that masked military
campaigns. The secrecy that masked arrests. The secrecy that masked
corruption.
And the secrecy that masked murder.
We have had challenges in accessing information. It took 12 years after I
stood in parliament to get a judicial commission of inquiry into an arms
deal that seemed riddled with corruption.
Those of us who revealed the corruption of the arms deal might not have
had that luxury were it not for our protected ability to expose the truth.
Sometimes people in government want to hide their actions and use the
tools of the state, and the power such control confers, to hide their
purpose.
But we never dreamed that we would actively legislate to remove the
protection of those who protect our democracy.
That is the situation we face in South Africa today.
No doubt you have heard of the Protection of Information Bill here in
South Africa.
Despite our best efforts, it will soon come before our parliament, though it
seems that our activism has provided a temporary reprieve.
It will make the lives of journalists and the truth-tellers of our society that
much more dangerous.
It is a backward law for a land that sought to be forward-looking.
I hope you have had fruitful engagements here. This conference has been
a unique and extraordinary meeting of minds and expertise.
I hope that you take what you have learned from each other and apply it
to your societies.
But as you move forward in your own countries, do so with a warning.
Sometimes those who achieve power on the tide of history forget the
principles that once moved them to action.
Whatever dangers you may face, we will always rely on those who know
to stand up to such abuse.
Such courage requires sacrifice, as I well know. We will do our part.
As you leave our great city, we ask you to do yours, for all our sakes.
The African continent needs us all.