Free speech is life itself

We come from a past in which those in our society who suffered banning orders, who fought an oppressive state machinery that sought to violently crush the very essence of freedom of expression, belief and opinion, understand all too well that "free speech is life itself".

Those of us who were the framers of a new constitutional dispensation vowed that we would never again allow any Black Wednesdays, or free-speech or expression "black-outs", to blot our landscape.

["Black Wednesday" - commemorated as National Press Freedom Day - was October 19 1977, when the apartheid regime declared 19 black consciousness organisations illegal, banned two newspapers and detained a great many activists.]

We consequently charted a course for a future that would be defined by a set of new values that would seek to protect and promote freedom of expression, belief and opinion as the full and final repudiation of the evils that hallmarked our beloved country.

It was therefore with great sadness that I read Freedom House's Freedom of the Press 2010 annual report in May this year, which stated that, for the first time in 20 years, there were no countries with a fully free press in Southern Africa.

In 2009, encroachments on the independence of the SABC and the passage of the controversial Film and Publications Act resulted in a negative score change of two points, which moved the country's status to "partly free".

As you will notice from the fact that [the Freedom House] report and press release were released in May, the report's negative verdict predates the release of the draconian Protection of Information Bill, the scurrilous arrest of Sunday Times journalist Mzilikazi wa Afrika, [the prosecution of whom] was thrown out of court in August, and the spectre of the media appeals tribunal which the ANC's national general council endorsed for further parliamentary scrutiny.

I note reports following this weekend's meeting between the SA National Editors' Forum and the government that the prospect of a statutory media appeals tribunal might be relegated to the side-lines in favour of a more pro-active approach with regard to self-regulation on the part of the print media.

But we must turn to the perennial question: when does self-regulation degenerate into self-censorship?

Such an approach could be consistent with the ANC national general council's decision to move the tribunal discourse to the parliamentary precinct, where a robust discussion of self-regulation might be more apposite than a brow-beating session about the prospect of a tribunal.

However, the issue highlights a broader tension and discourse, which have been of concern to me all along as events have unfolded. This tension and discourse were also present in the scurrilous and high-handed arrest of Afrika earlier this year.

It is the tacit discourse of fear and self-censorship that stalks all these debates about media behaviour and control mechanisms, whether they are to be in the private (self-regulation) or public (media appeals tribunal) realm.

It is in this regard that the case of Wa Afrika is particularly important. Wa Afrika has been doing what all investigative journalists have to do - following every detail of an increasingly murky and dangerous political drama that has unfolded in Mpumalanga, where tenders and intrigue have led to the death of various role players.

When Wa Afrika was questionably arrested, he was subjected to both a dubious prosecution, which was rightly summarily dismissed, as well as possibly unconstitutional treatment during the course of his arrest and detention. Subsequently, Wa Afrika could easily have self-censored his activities - having been brow-beaten by a rather hair-raising experience - or he could simply step right back into his journalistic ethos and continue to pursue the truth. He chose to do the latter and this week produced another headline about the dubious circumstances surrounding the death of Mpumalanga politician James Nkambule, who might have been poisoned.

This is the nature of the tension when intimidating tactics breed an atmosphere of fear of persecution, which results in self-censorship - which may be more effective than the actual censorship that might or might not be present in a statutory form such as the new Film and Publications Amendment Act and the draft Protection of Information Bill, which currently contains no public-interest exemption provisions.

It is this very prospect of a "fear instrument of persecution" (the putative media appeals tribunal) that would clearly result in self-censorship, which makes debates on responsible self-regulation all the more crucial in the aftermath of the meeting of the editors' forum with the government.

But no self-regulation must surrender the core element of a free press - its right to determine its own opinions and record the facts.

It is our collective responsibility to step back from the brink of potentially harmful laws and regulations that could create for us a kind of "false democracy" [in which the reality does not reflect the ideals espoused in the constitution], which would be a repudiation of our very own struggle for freedom, by confronting challenges head-on together - asking and answering one another's tough questions as we once did. Then we can ensure and secure free-speech and free-expression rights for successive generations.

But then this must be a challenge to which we all rise honourably and honestly, and with integrity foremost in our intentions and uppermost in our minds.

I'd like to conclude with the words of George Washington, while recalling the past from which we come and the values we sought to protect and entrench in the new order: "If the freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter."

Who can fight the persistent calls of Nelson Mandela to respect freedom of the press?

We have managed, through our sacrifice of blood, sweat and tears, to secure a precious new dispensation that rightly placed freedom of speech and access to information as lodestars of a new order.

We cannot and must not allow any denigration of these core beliefs that were so dearly won.

Societies that engage their citizens freely, and that ensure that they engage as freely as possible, are societies that prosper.

Societies that fail to do so might prosper for a while but they live on borrowed time as pressures for change, reform and societal upheaval build up.

We would do well to remember that, as we recall Black Wednesday and the system it symbolised.

• This is an edited version of the speech Asmal made at the commemoration of Black Wednesday, at the University of the Witwatersrand yesterday