Ironically, International Right to Know Day, which is celebrated today, has been one of the world’s best-kept secrets.
The day was the brainchild of a group of freedom of information campaigners who decided at a meeting in Sofia, Bulgaria seven years ago that it was high time that progress towards greater openness was celebrated so as to provide an annual focal point around which the growing number of global transparency-advocates could coalesce.
In 2002 there had been important gains – many countries were passing laws requiring the state to disclose information to citizen requesters. But the bigger case for a right to know had yet to be made and the campaigners wanted to make the idea mainstream. More importantly, they had – and still have – to make the case for why a “right to know” is valuable to people pursuing their ordinary, daily concerns.
It was the point at which a small but determined community of activists and practitioners who believed in the wider democratic potential of the idea of a “right to know” spread their wings and sought to join forces with a much larger group whose interests cut across a wide spectrum of socio-economic justice issues – health, housing, education, the environment.
The group in Sofia had been inspired by the work of the MKSS social movement in Rajasthan, India, whose mission to defend the interests of the working class, largely agrarian population of 90 million, was being constantly obstructed by a secret veil, behind which all manner of corruption was able to prosper.
Millions of dollars of donor aid was being stolen; private sector intermediaries were siphoning off the much-needed assistance; infrastructure projects were especially vulnerable. So, MKSS campaigned for a right to know law. They organised, they marched – in great numbers – and they prevailed.
Now they use the law to pierce the veil of secrecy to expose corruption.
In one infamous case, franchised ration-dealers were cheating the poor with false record-keeping. Getting those records though the right to know law, setting them against the agreements the licence-holders had with the state, and then triangulating the information with the direct evidence of the recipients of the rations revealed the extent of the perfidy. Many ration-dealers lost their jobs; many were arrested; the whole system of rationing was reformed.
This is what we need in Africa – a broad-based campaign to link transparency and the right to know with socio-economic justice. Until that is achieved, the idea of a right to know will seem like a far-away, luxury item.
At the moment, only South Africa and Uganda have modern, right to know laws, though there are many other countries with draft bills in the pipeline.
The South African experience is a good example of how governments are unlikely to summon the political will to implement effectively a right to know system until they see how it can help them deliver the development they have promised.
The administration of former President Thabo Mbeki was especially poor in this area. For all the trappings of consultation – the myriad scheme of presidential councils and imbizos – it was a government that used secrecy as a weapon.
The presidency itself clearly considered itself above the law: in the eight years between the passage of the Promotion of Access to Information Act – South Africa’s right to know law – and Mbeki’s departure, not once did his office accede to, or even deign to reply to, a request for information under the act. Such contempt for a constitutional right set completely the wrong tone and the wrong example.
There are pleasing signs of a reversal of attitude since elections last April brought Jacob Zuma to power. Writing recently in Johannesburg’s Sunday Times, the newly appointed director-general in the presidency, Vusi Mavimbela, acknowledged the importance of openness and genuine listening to meaningful engagement with the public.
This little word – “engagement” – has a special quality in South Africa. It is used with increasing emphasis by the Constitutional Court in its judgments on the constitutionality of public policy choices. Before reaching a decision that may impact on, say, the right of access to housing or health care, there must be meaningful engagement with the community concerned.
It captures the idea that decisions should be taken not imperiously from the top down, but in dialogue with those people who will be affected by the decision. In other words, it reflects the idea that democracy should be participatory as well representative – that it is not merely a question of placing a cross on a piece of paper every five years, but rather should be a persistent conversation between the governed and the government.
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Claiming the right to know is about claiming power as well as information because, as we all know, information is power. Whether it is information about housing lists, or school performance, or criminal attacks, or payments from big mining companies to government, or the inputs into a pharmaceutical supply chain, the right to know can help deliver decent housing, effective policing, honesty in government procurement and affordable medicine.
International Right to Know Day is about far more than celebrating the fact that nearly 100 countries have laws in place. It is about acknowledging that information poverty is unjust; governments must tell people what is going on, and people must demand to know.
Richard Calland is the director of the Economic Governance Programme of the Institute for Democracy in Africa and executive director of the Open Democracy Advice Centre in Cape Town, South Africa. He was one of the participants in the meeting in Sofia, Bulgaria, of which he writes.
