Doors slam shut on openness

Brendan Boyle: The management of information about Nelson Mandela's geriatric years by his family, his staff and the government betrays the ethos he brought to public life while he was in his prime.

We don't need here to rehash the bungles around the liberation president's hospital visit, but we can be fairly sure that had he been in command of his environment as he was 20 or even 10 years ago, things would have been done very differently.

The booming "Yes? How are you?" that announced him almost everywhere from the moment of his release from prison in 1990 was an invitation to share that his colleagues and ministers broadly sought under his leadership to emulate.

Now, as evidenced by the secretive handling of his illness and more graphically by the Protection of Information Bill currently making its way through parliament, the common political instinct is to hide the raw material of transparency and release only managed, sanitised and politically advantageous messages.

From the start, Mandela was willing to answer almost any question. Sometimes, as with his off-the-cuff proposal to give the vote to 14-year-olds, it went wrong. If convinced that he had erred, he would admit the mistake.

Occasionally he would be angered by a question and show it, but he would explain his objection and, as often as not, give the answer anyway.

The overwhelming impression left in his wake was one of respect for every individual, friend or foe, respect for the people as a collective and a real rather than rhetorical commitment to his party's policy of transparency.

In May 1991, I raced with a heavy heart from Cape Town to Rawsonville to get his reaction to the six-year prison sentence handed to his wife, Winnie, for her part in the kidnapping of the child activist, Stompie Moeketsi.

He stopped on his way from one meeting to another to take my question, but clearly had not been briefed. He looked as though he had been punched. But when his guards manhandled me away, he told them to stand back and gave his sad response.

He did not claim privacy or try to brand the question "un-African". I believe he accepted that the people he and his party aspired to lead had a right to know how he felt about the crime and the sentence.

With a light touch and largely by example, Mandela guided the nation to agreement on two constitutions - an interim one that created the conditions for the 1994 election and another which shapes our world today. Both enshrined consultation and "openness" as fundamental principles of democracy, which Mandela probably still honours in his interaction with people of every social rank.

The men and women who became MPs and ministers in Mandela's first government took their cue from him. They would take reporters' questions just about anywhere - even in Mannenberg, the bar near parliament where reporters, politicians and activists gathered.

As Mandela and his cabinet grappled with the enormity of the transformation they had promised, it became common for reporters to beard the president and his ministers in the lobby of parliament. Those who covered finance would linger in a corridor behind the Speaker's chair to catch Trevor Manuel taking a smoke break and put their questions to him.

In some ways, the political environment was more benign then. The right-wing threat still lingered in some minds and the depth of reconciliation had yet to be tested, but there were many easy fixes for ministers to make and take credit for. Undoing apartheid and disposing of the rot was easier than reassembling the remaining components into an egalitarian democracy because everyone knew then what had to be done.

It was easier to report progress, success or just a good idea than it is now to explain failure, whether reasonable or not.

Nor then had hope and optimism morphed into the entitlement and greed that hobble progress today.

But no one said it would be easy. If our celebration of open democracy and transparent government was sincere, we need to take Mandela's ethos of respect and make it the legacy we build into every aspect of our public and communal life.

Information can be power or at least a powerful weapon in a struggle for personal gain. Anyone who uses information in that way needs to be sure it is his to wield or to withhold and not, as is information about Mandela's health and his care, information owed to the people.

In legislation and in public life, we should keep only the secrets we must.