DR Tony O'Reilly's Independent Newspapers is seeking legal address against a controversial moratorium imposed by the Safety and Security Minister, Mr Steve Tshwete, on the release by the South African Police Service of crime statistics.
In papers filed with the Cape High Court last week, Independent Newspapers has asked the court to declare the moratorium unconstitutional and to order Mr Tshwete to release police crime data collated since the moratorium was imposed in June last year.
The Safety and Security Ministry's rational for prohibiting police officers from providing crime statistics to the media is that they are unreliable.
But opposition parties suspect the real reason for the moratorium is an attempt by the government to hide its failure to check the rising crime rate and to devise ways of manipulating data to reflect a more positive picture of its crime fighting capabilities.
Mr Tshwete has sought to neutralise opposition criticism and growing public unease by stressing that the moratorium was not implemented at his behest or that of National Police Commissioner, Mr Jackie Selebi, but at the request of the civilian research officer who heads the Crime Information and Analysis Centre, Mr Chris de Kock.
Mr De Kock has explained that the decision to suspend the release of statistics was taken on the advice of a committee on which statistical experts from Britain, France and Belgium were represented.
The leaking of official police statistics for Pretoria has hardened suspicions that the government has an undeclared agenda in ordering the moratorium. The figures, published in the Afrikaans newspaper, Rapport, and later confirmed as correct by Mr de Kock, show a 50 per cent increase in armed robberies since the New Year and a 112 per cent increase in the number of houses robbed last year compared with 1999.