Abstract
Is South Africa's constitutional right of access to information working in practice? According to the author, it still faces substantial political and commercial resistance, and the success of the courts in enforcing its implementing legislation, the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA), is mixed. The article reviews how the courts have interpreted and enforced the provisions of PAIA. More than a decade after its promulgation, the Act remains obstructed by continuing implementation challenges. Nonetheless, the courts have established a corpus of jurisprudence that admonishes public as well as private bodies to adhere to their constitutional and statutory information disclosure obligations in ways that will contribute to the development of a balanced access to information regime as the access laws evolve.
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*
Assistant Professor, School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Copyright © 2014 by The Pennsylvania State University. All rights reserved.
2014
The Pennsylvania State University
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