Black Tuesday, 22 November 2011, is the day in which the South African government voted for the “protection of information act” or, more aptly named, the secrecy bill. This bill suppresses media freedom and undermines freedom of expression by making it a criminal offence to publish certain information. It is named Black Tuesday for its resonances with Black Wednesday, October 19 1977, the day the apartheid government banned The World and Weekend World.

During apartheid the government was able to successfully suppress information. People had no idea what was going on in their own country. Often, people from other countries were more clued up as to the reality of the situation than average South Africans. The government controlled the newspapers, if they exposed something unwanted, they were banned and the journalists were jailed. They controlled the TV, while people were “slipping on soap” in detention in prisons, many happily went on watching Dallas. They were easily able to control the flow of information.

But not now.

Despite the government’s best efforts, the internet, and social media platforms especially, will make it impossible to control information like the apartheid government was able to. It is a small comfort. The bill means that much of the most pertinent information regarding illegal government activity will not reach these platforms because the journo with the information will be in jail sitting next to the whistle-blower. But outrage over the bill was felt strongly on facebook, while twitter was trending #blacktuesday, #POIB, #secrecybill and #protectionofinformationact. Hundreds of tweets against the passing of the bill came in every minute.

We are a nation with a strong history of protest and, as Egypt showed us, social media platforms are just the cohering force that can make protests truly effective. We will be in the dark. But, unless they ban Facebook, Twitter and the like, they can no longer keep us quiet in the dark.

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