Widespread opposition failed on Tuesday to prevent South Africa’s National Assembly passing the highly controversial Protection of State Information Bill.
The Bill has been challenged since its inception due to the many question marks surronding its constitutionality.
The Bill includes a Secrecy Law that gives up to 25 year jail sentences for anyone holding classified information; removes any protection for whistleblowers; has no public interest clause; and has no independent appeals mechanism.
The ANC dominated 400-member House voted the Bill in with 229 in favour and 107 against, despite opposition parties using every process available to them to halt it.
The Bill has been halted before but was pushed back onto the floor by the ANC after a sham public consultation this weekend that was only announced on Friday evening.
Avaaz.org described it as a “draconian bill that puts a shroud over government and undermines South Africa's hard won freedoms.”
Congress of the People leader and former ANC minister Mosiuoa Lekota raised concerns that the African National Congress would, like the apartheid state, suffer the shame of jailing journalists and whistleblowers who alerted the public to wrongdoing.
"I shudder to think that the men and women who say that money is being stolen will be locked up in the name of the African National Congress," he asserted to loud applause from the opposition benches and a packed public gallery.
Democratic Alliance parliamentary leader Lindiwe Mazibuko vowed that her party would continue to fight for incisive amendments to the Bill in the second house, and if that process failed to petition President Jacob Zuma not to sign the bill, but to send it back to Parliament.
"But if this bill is signed into law, I will lead an application to the Constitutional Court to have the act declared unconstitutional," Mazibuko added.
SA National Editors' Forum (Sanef) chairperson Mondli Makhany said that editors were "broken inside" over the Bill.
"All of us here, we are broken inside," Makhanya who was surrounded by the editors of some of South Africa's largest news organisation.
"We never thought we would come here dressed in black to witness the Constitution of our country being betrayed by those who built it."
Makhanya also vowed to continue battling the Bill with every possible resource at his disposal.
"We believe as Sanef that it was a sad and tragic day in the history of our republic."