Richard Calland

Transparency is one of the buzzwords of the contemporary democratic discourse. As the new “good governance” agenda formed in the early 1990s, so “transparency” took its place in the hegemonic lexicon. But it is also one of those words that is bandied about with careless promiscuity. Certainly it is an idea whose time has come – governments are now far more open than they used to be. Over sixty countries now have access to information (ATI) laws – fifty passed in the last decade, including South Africa in 2000. Slowly they have begun to see that not only do they not have “proprietorship” over the public information they hold but that withholding it can be very damaging. Meanwhile, the demand for corporate openness has grown and grown.