6RXWK$IULFD tion, which would be a threat to “national security”. The public interest override is not adequate and this has been the major contention by right to information activists. The National Assembly voted the Secrecy Bill in on 22 November 2011, by a hefty ANC majority (229 to 107). The second tier of Parliament, the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) conducted public consultations at which many members of the public protested against the implications of the Bill. Amendments were made but not enough to protect journalists. In November 2012, the NCOP passed the Bill. In 2013 the Bill will go before the National Aseembly one more time, before it proceeds for the president’s signature. Then it is law. The Right2Know (R2K) coalition, consisting over 400 organisations and over 30,000 individuals, consistently fought the Bill from its inception. Once the Bill is enacted the Confederation of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), the R2K and the South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) intend challenging it in the Constitutional Court. Already, journalists struggle to acquire information in the public interest, as they are up against the National Key Points Act, of 1980 (protecting “installations of strategic importance”), legisla- 6R7KLVLV'HPRFUDF\" tion from apartheid days. According to R2K using this act has increased by 50% over the past five years to stop the flow of information. The most recent case was the Public Works Ministry blocking financial info to journalists about president Jacob Zuma’s R280-million (approximately US$30-million) development of his homestead in Nkandla, Kwazulu-Natal province. Thus, the president has been shielded from scrutiny. )URP6HOIUHJXODWLRQWR ´,QGHSHQGHQWFRUHJXODWLRQµ Seemingly unrelated, a move from within the industry itself, cut into media freedom, was the switch from self-regulation to “independent co-regulation”. While industry players, from Sanef to the Press Council, emphasised that a review of self-regulation had nothing to do with the ANC’s criticism of the press, and its desire for a MAT, and the review was a “completely independent process”, from an outsider perspective, it appeared to be a trade off, and a response to the ANC’s and South African Communist Party’s numerous complaints about the “untransformed and bourgeoisie media”. The ruling party’s view was that the Press Council had no “teeth”, was not independent of