1.2.
The history of PAIA
When the South African Constitution was being drafted in the period following the fall of
Apartheid in the 1990s, various organisations and individuals campaigned for the inclusion
of a right of access to information. It was hoped that the inclusion of this right in the Bill of
Rights - Chapter 2 of the Constitution – would ensure that atrocities such as Apartheid could
never again take place as the state and private corporations would be obliged to act in an
accountable and transparent manner by providing access to information, and therefore
would be unable to hide behind the veil of secrecy which created the conditions under
which Apartheid took place.
In 1996 the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa came into force. Section 32
enshrined the right of access to information held by both public and private bodies. This
was, at the time, the first piece of law in the world which extended the right of access to
information to information held by private bodies. Section 32 also stated that legislation
must be enacted which would give effect to the right of access to information by detailing
the ways in which information from public and private bodies could be accessed, and by
providing further information on the grounds under which a public and private body could
refuse access to information.
In 2000 the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) finally came into law, fulfilling
the provision of section 32 of the Constitution for the enactment of legislation on access to
information.
South African Human Rights Commission
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