IN THE SPOTLIGHT: ‘SECRECY’ AND RICA AMENDMENT BILLS

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IN THE SPOTLIGHT: ‘SECRECY’ AND RICA AMENDMENT BILLS

• 31 December 2025
• In the Spotlight
• SA Legal Academy

Responsible for processing the twice-remitted 2010 Protection of State Information Bill as well as the more recently remitted 2023 Regulation of Interception of Communications & Provision of Communication-related Information (RICA) Amendment Bill, the National Assembly’s Justice & Constitutional Development Committee has not met on either piece of proposed new legislation for several months. Parliament’s Constitutional & Legal Services Office (CLSO) briefed members on the RICA Amendment Bill in March 2025 – and on the Protection of State Information Bill two months later. No formal deliberations having taken place since then, each Bill is now back in limbo.

As has been widely reported over the years, the Protection Of State Information Bill seeks to create a legislative framework for the state to respond to espionage and associated hostile activities by introducing a coherent approach to the protection of valuable information and the classification/declassification of state information.

Passed by Parliament in April 2013, remitted five months later, revised, passed a second time in November 2013 and remitted again after nearly seven years in limbo, the Protection of State Information Bill lapsed at the end of the sixth Parliament without having featured on the official agenda of any committee meetings.

Revived in July 2024, ten months later the Bill was the focus of a CLSO briefing in the context of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s reservations about its constitutionality.

According to a CLSO presentation document circulated at the meeting, that office found ‘merit’ in ‘most’ of the President’s reservations regarding the ‘crucial issues’ of:

• ‘ambiguity (which could result in abuse of power)’
• ‘unreasonable infringements of rights’, and
• ‘application that could undermine the principle of legality’.

With that in mind, the committee was advised to work ‘closely’ with the Department of Justice & Constitutional Development in obtaining:

• ‘clarity’ on related ‘policy considerations’ deemed by the CLSO to be ‘substantive’, and
• ‘guidance on (the) possible rephrasing or expansion of affected provisions in line with relevant policy considerations’.

Regarding the way forward, Parliamentary Monitoring Group records of the May 2024 meeting point to three options yet to be considered by the committee:

• reworking the Bill to address the President’s reservations, or
• recommending to the House that an ad hoc committee be established to deal with the Bill, ‘given its cross-cutting nature’ (an approach adopted when the Bill was first remitted in November 2013), or
• recommending that the Bill be withdrawn, given that ‘existing legislation … may already cover some of its intended provisions’.

There have been no meetings on the Bill since May 2025.

The RICA Amendment Bill’s overarching objective is to give effect to a February 2021 Constitutional Court ruling on a range of issues including:

• post-surveillance notification, and
• adequate safeguards where the subject of surveillance is a practising journalist or lawyer.

Passed in December 2023, the Bill’s ‘B’ version was remitted 11 months later and has since been the focus of three committee meetings held in February and March 2025, when members:

• were briefed by the department on the President’s reservations
• received a submission from the State Security Agency (which has never been made public), and
• were briefed by the CLSO.

According to a CLSO presentation document circulated at the committee’s March 2025 meeting on the Bill, the Constitutional Court gave Parliament 36 months to remedy defects in the principal statute. That period having ended before the Bill’s remittal, in January 2025 the President approached the Court among other things seeking the reinstatement of interim measures included in the 2021 judgment.

A July 2025 Constitutional Court ruling has since reinstated those measures and addressed other matters related to the principal statute’s operability. However, it is not clear how long Parliament now has to process the Bill. The committee has not met to consider it since March 2025.

Please click the links below for further information and insights:

• Protection of State Information Bill’s ‘H’ version (passed in November 2013 and last remitted in May 2020)
• President’s reservations
• CLSO presentation
• RICA Amendment Bill’s ‘B’ version
• President’s reservations (media statement)
• CLSO presentation
• July 2025 Constitutional Court ruling
• February 2021 Constitutional Court ruling

Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch

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