4.3.7.4.
“Manifestly frivolous or vexatious requests, or substantial and
unreasonable diversion of resources”
An information officer may refuse a request for information if he/she is of the opinion that
processing requests will be unreasonably time consuming and lead to waste of resources. In
addition, an Information Officer may refuse access to a record if the request is seen to be
meaningless or made by a requester to unnecessarily annoy or provoke.
4.4. Public Interest Override
All the protections afforded to information as detailed above falls away if the release of the
information is in the public interest. In this way the public interest test overrides all the
other grounds of refusal of access to information.
The following test must be applied by an Information Officer of a public or private body
before refusing to allow access to information that falls under the categories for nondisclosure listed above. If these conditions are met, then the information must be disclosed
on the grounds of public interest.
Do the records in
question contain
Does the information
information relating to
demonstrate a serious
an imminent and
breach of a law?
serious public safety
OR
or environmental risk?
South African Human Rights Commission
Does the public
interest in dislosing
the information clearly
outweigh the potential
AND
harm?
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