The ongoing debate and consideration of the Protection of State Information Bill (often termed the ‘Secrecy’ Bill or Act) has provided a true test for the post-apartheid South African democracy. Using a case study of that legislation’s period of consideration over more than six years, this paper will propose three ways in which the Bill tested democracy in South Africa. The legislation tested South Africa’s structures of representative democracy in showing up the failure of the National Assembly to oversee the intelligence services, in showing the lack of individual accountability for representatives in South Africa’s post-apartheid democracy, and in pointing to the as yet clumsy modes of incorporating elements of the national debate from provincial and local level in the National Council on Provinces (the second legislative chamber which, together with the National Assembly, makes up Parliament). The dominant democracy framework is not as helpful in analysing these developments as an analysis attending to the symbolic politics of transparency between the intelligence services and the media. This article thus explores the complex field within which the politics of the Secrecy Bill has played itself out in South Africa. Finally, the article also goes beyond the metaphor of balancing and argues that transparency and secrecy are not two concepts separate from each other. The insight that transparency and opacity are mutually implicated allows us to understand better how both are supported and nurtured within a constitutional democracy.
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