The proposed Media Tribunal: Poverty and women’s economic empowerment

“There can be no press freedom in South Africa until women’s voices are equally heard in the media”, is what Gender Links noted in a statement to mark National Press Freedom Day on 19 October (https://www.genderlinks.org.za/article/south-africa-no-press-freedom-until-womens-voices-are-equally-heard-2010-10-19).

This fact remains when one looks through a gender lens at the recent Protection of Information Bill which is a new piece of legislation currently being deliberated by the South African government.

The Bill is widely contested by civil society, academics, non-fiction writers and social movements arguing that, should it be passed, the Bill will give too much power to the government to classify or declassify controversial information. In other words, they feel it gives the ruling party the power to deem anything they like “unfit” for public consumption.

More than 180 civil society organisations and numerous prominent individuals endorsed a civil society statement titled Let the Truth Be Told! Stop the Secrecy Bill in August 2010. The statement denounces the Bill and how it will undermine the struggle for whistleblower protection and access to information. The statement calls for a redrafting of the Bill to comply with the constitutional values of access to information and freedom of expression.

The differential impact of the Bill on South Africans has been outlined in these debates but has tended to be elitist. According to Aubrey Matshiqi, a senior research associate at the Centre for Policy Studies, “the fact that some reduced the Protection of Information Bill to a scarecrow in debates about the tribunal compromised the quality of discourse in a way that pushed moderate voices to the margins.” For instance the voices of women and how the Bill will ultimately worsen their poverty line barely made it to the debates.

Free flow of information which could be “frozen” by the Bill is a potentially great instrument to uncover corruption by government officials. The 2008 Who answers to women? Gender and Accountability, Progress of the World’s Women Report notes that women are more vulnerable to the impact of corruption than men, for instance in public service delivery. Corruption also has gender-manifestations. It has been reported that in certain instances, young women and girls have had to pay in kind to get good grades in class. Such cases may become difficult to unmask as investigative journalists may not have access to evidence especially where it concerns strong officials.

Another related issue is that there is great inequality deepening in South Africa with women and men living below the poverty line. The Bill stipulates that commercial information in the hands of state is subject to classification if state or third party interest may be prejudiced by disclosure. This will in turn cast a veil of secrecy over such things as public tender processes. Yet, the SADC Protocol on Gender and Development of 2008 points out as one of its targets that, “with regard to the affirmative action provisions of Article 5, introduce measures that women benefit equally from economic opportunities, including those created through public procurement processes.” Therefore the proposed Bill will undermine clean and accountable government practices for instance documents of tender processes and who gets awarded.

Thus the Bill will have an economic impact on women and worsen poverty among them. This will also see the region not living up the Millennium Development Goals which seek to end poverty by 2015.