ANC eases up on info bill prison sentences

The ANC has conceded that people who publish classified information that would "prejudice" the state should not be jailed for 20 years.

The Protection of Information Bill would make it a crime, punishable by up to 20 years in prison, to publish classified information deemed beneficial to anyone engaged in activities hostile to this country.

The ANC originally wanted the same sentence to be imposed on anyone who published state secrets that could "prejudice" the state. This would have put journalists at risk because the state could have argued that stories in which state secrets were revealed to criticise the government were "prejudicing the state".

Senior parliamentary law adviser Ntuthuzela Vanara told parliament's committee on the bill yesterday that using state secrets to "prejudice the country" was not the same as using them to commit "hostile activity" against the country.

The ANC acceded to Vanara's proposal to change the bill to punish people using state secrets to "prejudice the national security of the Republic".

DA MP Dene Smuts welcomed this. But the committee continued to debate the definition of "national security". The bill provides for state security agencies to classify information only if they think it in the interests of "national security".

The ANC agreed to a DA proposal for "lawful political activity, advocacy, protest or dissent" not to be seen as threats to national security.

Tempers flared as MPs deadlocked on the rest of the definition of "national security". The ANC insisted on defining it as protecting the republic against "exposure of a state security matter to undermine the constitutional state in the republic". But the DA said national security would be threatened only if state secrets were exposed with the intention of overthrowing the government.

ANC MPs refused to budge.

DA MP David Maynier said the apartheid Bureau of State Security had argued similarly in its efforts to stop the media publishing the names of people detained without trial.