Power Is Information: South Africa's Promotion of Access to Information Act in Context

Information professionals in some developing countries are likely to view ‘context' differently from those in developed countries. ‘Context' becomes even more problematic when the searchers for information are ordinary citizens and the retrieval tool is a piece of national legislation that promotes access to information held by the state and the private sector. These and other difficulties become apparent in a case study of South Africa's Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA), of 2000. Using this legislation, ‘context' is examined from the perspective that power is access to information, which focuses on tensions in the struggle for access. The paper argues that an enabling context or culture of access is just as important as progressive information access legislation in developing countries. And it comments on the ‘remote contexts' of Ingwersen and Jarvelin's nested model of context stratification. Ways of extending this model and promoting a culture of access are recommended.

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