The outrageous comment by state security minister Siyabonga Cwele in Parliament that opponents raising their concerns against the so-called Secrecy Bill are agents of foreign spies is ominous.
Such statements in the highest representative structure of our democracy represents a dangerous and paranoid direction for our country. The fact that Cwele has not yet been contradicted or disciplined makes make me even more suspicious and opposed to the passage of this proposed law.
Are we drifting back to an era of apartheid-style censorship, with the new apparatchiks deciding what our thoughts and debates should be? Just as such tactics failed to silence us in the past and spawned a grassroots rebellion of alternative media, what our current leaders should realise is that the rise of the Internet and the powerful tools of social media make imposing a veil of secrecy in South Africa, or the world, impossible today.
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