26 March 2023 | 03:27 PM

Watch: Murray Hunter highlights the key issues around Rica

Inside Stories

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The Constitutional Court must decide whether to uphold the high court’s September 2019 ruling that found in amaBhungane’s favour and declared several provisions of Rica – the Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provision of Communication Related Information Act – to be unconstitutional.

AmaBhungane launched its challenge to Rica in 2017 after learning that state security operatives had listened in on the phone communication of Sam Sole, one of our managing partners.

This followed a wider pattern of evidence that state spies routinely snoop on journalists, among many others. The information we secured about Sam’s spying served as scaffolding for a long overdue challenge to the reckless spying that Rica had enabled.

On Tuesday, 25 March, the Constitutional Court heard arguments from all parties, including counter-argument from the two entities whose spying powers were curbed by the high court’s ruling: the police and the State Security Agency (SSA). Also read:

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INVESTIGATOR:

Aisha Abdool Karim

Aisha is a freelance science and health reporter. She is joining the amaB team to work on a project about water and sanitation. Aisha’s passion for long-form narrative and investigative journalism was sparked while doing her master’s degree at Columbia University in New York. After graduating in 2018, she returned to South Africa and began working as a general beat reporter for the Daily Maverick. Aisha joined the Bhekisisa Centre for Health Journalism in 2020 to focus on science reporting. During her time there, she covered the COVID-19 pandemic extensively — from fact-checking harmful medical misinformation to unpacking the science behind vaccine development. Aisha’s special interests include analysing health systems and in-depth coverage of public health issues and infectious diseases. She also loves spreadsheets and digging through data.