SAPS threatens Independent with apartheid-era law

NEWSWATCH: Mail & Guardian reports the South African Police Service has threatened Independent Newspapers because it wants the group to 'hand over material related to intercepted calls involving national police commissioner Riah Phiyega'. On the media front, Gill Moodie reports on Grubstreet that Caxtons is buying RamsayMedia.

By Rod Baker

4 Nov 2013

(Image: DRs Kulturarvsprojekt from Copenhagen, Denmark, via Wikimedia Commons)

For more:

Mail & Guardian: SAPS threatens media group with legal action over Phiyega tapes... How's this for a strange one... A state organisation in "the new democratic South Africa is using an apartheid-era law - the Protection of Information Act (PIA) of 1982 - to get its way."
Now, according to the Mail & Guardian report, "Government does not deny that the 'Secrecy Bill's' predecessor, PIA, was open to abuse by the apartheid regime, which used it to hide state information at will and jail those who disseminated 'classified' information."
So SAPS now uses this same law to threaten a media group?
Grubstreet: Exclusive: Caxton buys out RamsayMedia... Meanwhile, on the media front, Grubstreet's Gill Moodie reports that Caxtons is out to buy RamsayMedia. A spokesperson for RamsayMedia told Bizcommunity.com this morning that the proposed sale is still in the negotiation stage.

Rod Baker

About Rod Baker

Rod Baker is Content Director at Bizcommunity.com. A journalist since before computers, he worked on a wide range of magazines and, in his youth, rose through the ranks from being a lowly and abused sub-editor, to a high and still abused editor and publisher. He has been editor and publisher of a number of magazines, as well as a newspaper. He has edited many books, and written a number too. Email him at moc.ytinummoczib@dor.