By Emmanuel Nyirenda
Nyirenda is former managing director of the Times of Zambia and Zambia Daily Mail. He also served as permanent secretary at the Ministry of information. This article was published in the Zambia Daily Mail and is reprinted with permission. The introduction of an access to information law in Zambia has been congroversially delayed. (See previous FreedomInfo.org report.)
When Zambians started clamouring for freedom of information (FOI) a decade ago, many of them, including some opposition members of Parliament, did so believing it would enhance media freedom, so that more of what was going on in Government could be revealed. The FOI Bill that has been on the drawing board for close to ten years is now appropriately called Access to Information (ATI) Bill – about citizens’ access to information held by the State and State institutions as an enhancement of transparency in governance.
Access to information is not about media freedom or designed to benefit the media primarily, explained Information Minister, Mwansa Kapeya last week.
Access to information is about citizens’ ability to request and obtain information that is held by the state in order to compare it with what they have or simply to get the truth of what transpires in government or state institutions.
However, the cliché that one’s freedom ends where that of others begins is pertinent. For access to information without limits can end up hurting others and undermine peace and security of the state. To this end, countries that have prescribed access to information have ensured that information about state security, communication in the process of arriving at government decisions, information about dealings with foreign governments and that about individual privacy are exempt in the exercise of this freedom.
Currently, we have laws which protect classified information and individual rights to privacy in such matters as health. Unless these laws are repealed or the ATI Bill takes care of these matters, unfettered access to information could contravene these laws and Zambians may discover to their horror that they had unleashed a dangerous animal on themselves.
The very freedom they clamour for today could be used to pry into their private affairs and disclose security matters to the detriment of national security.
The fact that it has taken close to ten years to get the Bill to the stage it is now is a boon: It has enabled government to study how these laws have worked in other counties and to avoid the pitfalls others may have encountered.
In the United Kingdom, where the Freedom of Information Act came into operation several years after its enactment, they discovered that media requesters were a minority, just about 10 per cent and that most requesters were interested in matters of personal privacy and those concerning their rights, social and economic development at local level.
Recently, Zambians were disappointed to learn that the ATI Bill which was to have been presented to Parliament during the current sitting will be delayed in order to enable legal draftsmen to harmonise it with existing laws –some of them in conflict with the Bill’s provisions. Some Civil Society Organisations have accused government of disinterest in the Bill.
What appears to be the case is that the layman draft did not take into consideration many other laws that would be contravened or which are in conflict with an unencumbered access to information Act.
Many recall that the initiators of the Bill were largely civil society organisations supported by opposition members of Parliament, many of them aggrieved by what they regarded as secrecy in the governance of the country which they believed shielded corrupt leaders. They did not have the benefit of experience in government or experience of other countries.
The election of late President Levy Mwanawasa, who had embarked on a relentless campaign against corruption, buoyed up the drive for freedom of information, ostensibly in order to enhance transparency, but largely in order to confirm and enable the media to publish alleged corruption by those in power.
Seen as a popular move, opposition MPs with the assistance of Law Association of Zambia and CSOs drafted and tabled a Private Member’s Bill which the government of the day offered to embrace as its own after revising it. In its original state, the draft was far from being acceptable to people in government who were custodians of classified information and had the advantage of studying similar Bills or Acts of other countries.
The original draft also revealed a conflict of interest between the intentions of the initiators who were more interested in exposure of corruption, and those in government who in some cases feared it was designed to weaken government through over exposure of information.
It appears that until there is a convergence of interests – that access to information held by government is only a process of good governance in which transparency is vital without endangering state security and personal privacy – suspicions will thrive to the detriment of the Bill.
The process of harmonising the Bill with existing laws is, therefore, vital as long as government is not suspected to use it to water down the Bill and as long as other stakeholders appreciate that this is in the interests of all concerned.
Filed under: Latest Features