South Africa’s controversial Protection of Information Bill – which IPI and other press freedom groups had warned would gravely undermine free media – will be redrafted, South African MPs said on Friday, according to local news reports.

A parliamentary ad hoc committee tasked with overseeing processing of the bill has agreed to refer to proposals by State Security Minister Siyabonga Cwele that two strongly-contested clauses be removed, in setting out a new draft, according to South Africa’s Independent Online News, and other media outlets.

“The minister of course does not have the power to amend the bill, but I would suggest that we use some of his concessions as a starting point for a new draft,” committee chairman Cecil Burgess said, Independent Online News reported.

Following an international media freedom uproar over the Bill, Cwele had last month said he believed the use of “national interest” as a reason for classification of information should be dropped. Cwele also suggested that commercial information should not be classifiable.

The ANC party’s Vytjie Mentor on Friday hinted that the ruling party could be open to a further softening of the Bill. Mentor told fellow MPs that no classification should be indefinite, that it should not be permitted to undermine South Africans’ constitutional rights, and that it should not be employed to cloak corruption or silence the media – all concerns raised by press freedom advocates.

South African media quoted State Security Minister Cwele as saying: “We will also have to address the concern of what will be the impact of this bill on the life of ordinary South Africans, and in various fields of life, like in the sciences, in print media, people who write, etc.

“Those should be the key things we should bear in mind in the final stages of this bill… we do have a responsibility to allay those fears that are out there.”

IPI travelled to South Africa in October to lobby against proposed media regulations there. Addressing the country’s Black Wednesday media freedom event, IPI Acting Director Alison Bethel McKenzie said: “Over the past 16 years this country has been a press freedom beacon on a continent littered with ruthless enemies of the press. And yet your freedom of the press, that pillar of a free society, and with it your hard-earned democracy, are today under threat.”