The secrecy bill. What the hell is wrong with this government?! Seriously. The secrecy bill is not another apartheid, it is a mockery of the freedom that we fought for to get out of apartheid, it is a mockery of the rights that everyone fought for 30 years ago.
First off, what is the secrecy bill? It is basically a law that will prevent media from publishing certain defamatory stories about members of parliament. It will inhibit their ability to perform their jobs and will censor our right to freedom of information. But let us look at this in a different light.
Compare South Africa is a public company, the citizens would be the equivalent to shareholders (people who invested in the country, which is done by living here and paying tax etc) and the Board of Directors would be the members of parliament (their responsibility is to guide SA strategically and give us direction and ensure our investment grows).
Now, imagine a director of a company gets caught drunk in public having sex. He will be held accountable to the shareholders for tarnishing the name of the company and bring it into disrepute. He is a representative of that company's image and his actions are a poster of the company, he would be held accountable and most likely be fired, even though this action had nothing to do with the company and it is his private life, he is still accountable.
So too should the members of parliament be accountable for the actions they commit while not in parliament as they have a responsibility and they are always a representative of our country. We as "shareholders" have a right to know what is going on in our "company" and how it is being treated and the decisions it is making. The 'directors' are not using their own investment but are using our investment, and so it should be done in favour of us.
Keeping on the company simile, each company is required by law to have an EXTERNAL audit (this is because an external audit would have no ties to the company and would not be influenced by the company and as such his reports and findings would in most cases be considered accurate, fair and without bias). If we had an internal auditor there is nothing to say that the reports have been tampered with or that anything stated is the truth as only the directors know the truth.
The external auditors of our country would be the media, these are the people who would not be subject to bias and would report the facts, the truth and that is all. Nothing more and nothing less. By censoring this parliament is creating a mockery of our constitution.
The members of parliament need to be held accountable for their actions and it is disturbing that a bill of this genre can even be up for debate. I hope that this is not the beginning of something terrible to come, if we do not know the inner workings of parliament then how can we stop them from doing something even more disturbing next time.
If it doesn't stop here then it is only a matter of time before media is cancelled and we are living in a state where parliament reports on what they feel is worthy of us knowing. The media needs to be free from government regulation in order to be just, fair and unbiased.
Feel free to comment, agree, challenge correct anything you feel I have said or not said.
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