VISION OF FXI

A society where everyone enjoys freedom of expression and the right to access and disseminate information and knowledge.

MISSION OF FXI

To fight for freedom of expression and eliminate inequalities in accessing and disseminating information and knowledge in South Africa and beyond.

HISTORY 

The Freedom of Expression Institute (FXI) was established in 1994 to protect and foster the rights to freedom of expression and access to information, and to oppose censorship. The Institute was formed from a merger of three organisations: The Campaign for Open Media , the Anti-Censorship Action Group and the Media Defence Trust .

The FXI undertakes a wide range of activities insupport of these objectives, including lobbying, education, monitoring, research, publicity and litigation and the funding of legal cases that advance these rights. In the process, it networks with, and collaborates with, a wide range of organisations locally and internationally.

The FXI is a voluntary, non-governmental organisation managed by an Executive Committee, which is elected once every two years at the organisation's Annual General Meeting (AGM ). In addition to the Executive Committee, the FXI has a staff of eight full-time members.

The FXI is a member of the International Freedom of Expression eXchange (IFEX) which monitors freedom of the media and freedom of expression on a global scale. Through the IFEX Action Alert system, FXI publicises freedom of expression violations in South Africa and draws in other organisations to support its campaigns.

The FXI has the following programmes:

• Anti-censorship Programme;
• Community Media Policy Research Unit;
• Access to Information Programme;
• Media & Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) Programme.

The first and second Programmes were set up in the course of 2002, while the third was established in August 2004. The fourth Programme was established at around the same time, and was merged with the-then existing Community Media Policy Research Unit. The Defence Fund has been re-established as the Legal Unit, which, together with the Finance and Administration Units, provides cross-cutting functions to the Programmes

The FXI is registered in terms of the Non-rofit Organisation (NPO) Act. The NPO registration number is 034887.

CAMPAIGN FOR OPEN MEDIA

COM was an influential media policy group which played a central role in the defining the steps to be taken during South Africa's transition to democracy, to enable the media to play its proper role during the country's first democratic election and in the post-apartheid era. COM has its roots in the earlier regional Save the Press Committees which had been established in various parts of the country.

This included:

• the appointment of a new Board of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (the public broadcaster) through a public and transparent process which would render the Board independent of the influence of any government of the day or the influence of other political parties;
• monitoring the media in the run-up to the election, especially the SABC, to ensure that as the public broadcaster it would play an impartial role;
• lobbying for the establishment of an Independent Broadcasting Authority (now Icasa) to regulate the broadcasting industry. Again this authority had to be independent of the influence of any government and other political parties;
• identifying the laws which curb the free flow of information and lobbying for their removal or amendment;
• establishing new bodies for the adjudication of public complaints against the media and to uphold ethical Codes of Conduct for the media.

Nearly all these objectives have been achieved and COM played a central co-ordinating role in achieving the first three. The fourth objective was referred to the Media Defence Trust, an organisation set up to provide support to smaller independent media fighting press freedom cases in the courts.

ANTI-CENSORSHIP ACTION GROUP (ACAG)

ACAG was the country's foremost anti-censorship lobby group which undertook many campaigns to create local and international public awareness of the extent and form of censorship in the old South Africa. It was particularly active in opposing the States of Emergency in the mid-1980's to counter attacks on the press by the-then National Party Government.

The Anti-Censorship Action Group (ACAG) was engaged mainly in monitoring censorship in South Africa, drawing attention to it and campaigning against it. ACAG issued a monthly newsletter, Update which recorded daily instances of censorship, including assassinations, the banning of marches and meetings, the detention and torture of people and other restrictions on free political activity. Information from Update has been used in the past by international organisations such as Article 19, Committee to Protect Journalists and Index on Censorship, as well as by many teachers, students, lawyers and academics locally and internationally.

ACAG was also active in co-hosting anti-censorship conferences and festivals with the Weekly Mail & Guardian newspaper (now the Mail & Guardian) and hosted many public panel discussions on censorship as well as poetry readings of works which had been banned. The FXI is continuing this work and has inherited ACAG's resource centre, consisting of press clippings, magazines and books on censorship, as well as the Update publication. The resource centre is used extensively by students, academics, lawyers and other researchers interested in censorship issues.

ACAG also regularly gave advice to victims of censorship and drew attention to their predicaments by publicising these incidents.

MEDIA DEFENCE TRUST

The Media Defence Trust (MDT) was formed in December 1988 as a Registered Charitable Trust in response to the wave of state action against the media, such as the closure of newspapers (New Nation, Weekly Mail, South), the seizure of publications (Al-Qalam, Crisis News, Learn and Teach) and the detention of journalists (Vincent Mfundisi, Zwelakhe Sisulu and Brian Sokhuthu). It has fought for freedom of expression by successfully fending off many attacks by the apartheid state against sections of the free press that would not have been able to afford litigation in a variety of noted cases and actions.

Not only did the MDT assist the media in protecting themselves against censorship and harassment, it also provides funding for pre-publication advice to independent newspapers on a day-to-day basis. It ran a "hotline" for journalists who experienced intimidation in the volatile atmosphere of political reporting and it provided funds to particular projects which are aimed at producing research and policy guidelines in the area of democracy and freedom of expression. One of its projects was the establishment of a legal media resource centre and research project, based at the Centre for Applied Legal Studies. The research project has yielded contributions to the drafting of the transitional legislation relating to the media, namely the Independent Media Commission Act and the Independent Broadcasting Authority Act.

More recently, research into the existing censorship laws has been completed, and research into different Freedom of Information Acts is still being conducted. This information is being used by the FXI on an ongoing basis to inform its activities and the work of the MDT is now being carried on by a sub-committee of the FXI called the Legal Unit, the former Media Defence Fund . This sub-committee is under the direction of the FXI, which decides what cases are to be litigated in the Constitutional Court or in other South African courts to strengthen the legal and constitutional basis of freedom of speech and expression.

MEDIA DEFENCE FUND 

Set up as a Committee of the FXI in 1994, the Defence Fund was previously known as the Defence Fund. Its re-launch as the Freedom of Expression Defence Fund in 1997 reflects the broadening of its role to include all cases involving freedom of expression and access to information, and not only those involving the media. Its predecessor was the Media Defence Trust, established in 1989 in response to the wave of state action against the media, such as the closure of newspapers and detention of journalists. In its six years of establishment, the Media Defence Trust was the sole supporter and defender of independent newspapers, journalists and those elements in the media that were unable to pay their legal costs. The Media Defence Trust was incorporated into the FXI in 1994 at the request of its administrators, and became the Defence Fund of the FXI.

In 2001, the FXI commissioned an external evaluation of the FXDF after the Fund had run dry. The intention of the evaluation was to review the work of the Fund to learn lessons that would enable it to be re-established on a more sustainable basis. Flowing from this evaluation, it was decided to re-think the FXDF model. In 2004 it was decided to rather establish a Legal Unit (LU) within the FXI.