Wits University Research Archive

The Open Secrets Collection is a digital collection which has been arranged according to the location of information acquired in the process of research for the book, Apartheid, Guns and Money. The collection was originally housed at the South African History Archive (SAHA) and later donated to the University of the Witwatersrand University Research Archives.

PAIA DoD: A victory for secrecy, is a loss for truth and justice

For ten years, the South African department of Defence has been delaying its constitutional duty to release declassified documents to Open Secrets researchers. The documents were requested in 13 September 2013, but through obstructive behaviour including refusing to abide by a 2021 order of court the DoD has not complied with this information request. Should the DoD win in its efforts, it will be a victory for secrecy. 

It is telling that one of the DoD’s arguments for why it cannot release the documents is because of a secret agreement entered into between the apartheid state of South Africa and the apartheid state of Israel. It’s a travesty that our democratic government is protecting the secrets of apartheid states.

SARB took 14 months to formally refuse SAHA’s request, despite the legally mandated 30-day deadline. The Bank argued, amongst other things, that releasing the documents threatened confidentiality and posed a risk to South Africa’s economic interests.

SAHA launched a court action in 2016 to ask the South Gauteng High Court to direct SARB to release these records, due to their public interest importance. In March 2020, the High Court ruled against SAHA, making an astounding cost order of R2.7-million which served to not only potentially bankrupt SAHA but also had the chilling effect to put all civil society organisations at risk of punitive costs if they fought the State in court for access to information records.

In 2020, SAHA appealed the South Gauteng High Court judgement at the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA). This time, SAHA was victorious. In its judgement in May 2020, the SCA described the SARB’s approach to withholding  records on entirely spurious grounds as ‘redolent to the dark days of apartheid where secrecy was routinely weaponised against a defenceless population’.

In April 2021, after a 8-year battle, the SARB finally released the records of Jan Blaauw and Vito Palazzolo to Open Secrets. This is the result of a precedent-setting legal action that ensured the right of all South Africans to access information in the public interest.