Information newsletter
Issue 1(13), January 2005

FOI Aavocates: ISCOR directed to Release Minutes of Management Meetings
by Teboho Makhalemele
Open Democracy Advice Centre (ODAC)

The Pretoria High Court has on 26 January 2005, in terms of the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) directed Iscor Limited, the steel giant to release certain records, including minutes of management meetings between the period 1965 to 1973.

This groundbreaking judgment related to a request in terms of PAIA filed by
Mondli Hlatshwayo, an MA student at the University of the Witwatersrand. He had applied to the Pretoria High Court to compel Iscor to allow him access to minutes of meetings at Iscor Vanderbijlpark as part of the research towards his dissertation / thesis on labour relations between 1965 – 1973, when Iscor was still a public body.

Iscor had consistently refused to disclose the information citing different reasons at different times, namely that the documents did not exist and /or that the researcher was not entitled to the records as Iscor is and was never a public body. Moreover they also argued that the records should not be disclosed as they related to the exercise of a power or performance of a function as a private body.

Judge Van der Westhuizen dismissed these submissions and held that Iscor was a public body and that the records requested including the minutes of management meetings during that period related to Iscor’s exercise of power or performance of a function as a public body. In reaching his decision, the judge considered different factors that existed during that period, including the objectives of the company and the amount of power wielded by government by virtue of their large shareholding and through the provisions of the 1928 and 1979 Steel Industry Act.

The applicant’s attorney, Teboho Makhalemele from the Open Democracy Advice Centre (ODAC) has hailed this judgment as a step forward to ensuring that public and private bodies start taking the right of access to information seriously and comply with the requirement of the Act. According to Ms Makhalemele, this case will also serve a broader public interest. “It is in the interest of all South Africans that public documents and actions of parastatals, including during apartheid years are made open and transparent. It is also essential that all bodies which employ individuals to the extent that ISCOR does, co-operate in making available information and/or documentation that will foster constructive critical academic analysis, particularly in light of its own history. It is also a signal to other bodies that this type of objection will not stand judicial scrutiny.”

For more information contact:
Teboho Makhalemele
Open Democracy Advice Centre (ODAC)
teboho@opendemocracy.org.za
Centre for Applied Legal Studies
D J Du Plessis Building, West Campus,
Wits University
Johannesburg, 2050
Tel: +27 11 717 8605
Fax: +27 11 403 2341
082 494 8954
26/01/2005