1.2. The history of PAIA When the South African Constitution was being drafted in the period following the fall of Apartheid in the 1990s, various organisations and individuals campaigned for the inclusion of a right of access to information. It was hoped that the inclusion of this right in the Bill of Rights - Chapter 2 of the Constitution – would ensure that atrocities such as Apartheid could never again take place as the state and private corporations would be obliged to act in an accountable and transparent manner by providing access to information, and therefore would be unable to hide behind the veil of secrecy which created the conditions under which Apartheid took place. In 1996 the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa came into force. Section 32 enshrined the right of access to information held by both public and private bodies. This was, at the time, the first piece of law in the world which extended the right of access to information to information held by private bodies. Section 32 also stated that legislation must be enacted which would give effect to the right of access to information by detailing the ways in which information from public and private bodies could be accessed, and by providing further information on the grounds under which a public and private body could refuse access to information. In 2000 the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) finally came into law, fulfilling the provision of section 32 of the Constitution for the enactment of legislation on access to information. South African Human Rights Commission 13