8 June, 2011 – Today the Nelson Mandela Foundation and the University of the Witwatersrand’s School of Law co-convened a focus group on the Protection of Information Bill (POIB). It was designed as an exploratory conversation between representatives of key stakeholder structures of the state and of civil society. The conversation was informed by a position paper prepared by Wits’ Iain Currie and Jon Klaaren.
State structures represented were the Department of Justice, ICASA, the Inspector-General of Intelligence, the National Intelligence Agency and the South African Human Rights Commission.
From civil society were the Archival Platform, FXI, the Institute for Security Studies, Khulumani Support Group, Mapungubwe Institute, Media Monitoring Africa, ODAC, the Open Society Foundation, PSAM, the Right2Know Campaign and SAHA.
Broad agreement emerged on what the key questions and issues are. There was also agreement that the conversation should be taken to a wider forum by the Foundation and Wits.
The position paper was revised in light of the conversation, and can be viewed here.