Speaking Freely: Anriette Esterhuysen

*This interview took place in April 2024 at NetMundial+10 in São Paulo, Brazil. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Anriette Esterhuysen is a human rights defender and computer networking trailblazer from South Africa. She has pioneered the use of Internet and Communications Technologies (ICTs) to promote social justice in South Africa and throughout the world, focusing on affordable Internet access. She was the executive director of Association for Progressive Communications from 2007 to 2017.  In November 2019 Anriette was appointed by the Secretary-General of the United Nations to chair the Internet Governance Forum’s Multistakeholder Advisory Group. 

Greene: Can you go ahead and introduce yourself for us?

Esterhuysen: My name is Anriette Esterhuysen, I am from South Africa and I’m currently sitting here with David in Sao Paulo, Brazil. My closest association remains with the Association for Progressive Communications where I was executive director from 2000 to 2017.  I continue to work for APC as a consultant in the capacity of Senior Advisor on Internet Governance and convenor of the annual African School on Internet Governance (AfriSIG).

Greene: Can you tell us more about the African School on Internet Governance (AfriSIG)?

AfriSIG is fabulous. It differs from internet governance capacity building provided by the technical community in that it aims to build critical thinking. It also does not gloss over the complex power dynamics that are inherent to multistakeholder internet governance. It tries to give participants a hands-on experience of how different interest groups and sectors approach internet governance issues.

AfriSIG started as a result of Titi Akinsanmi,  a young Nigerian doing postgraduate studies in South Africa, approaching APC and saying, “Look, you’ve got to do something. There’s a European School of Internet Governance, there’s one in Latin America, and where is there more need for capacity-building than in Africa?” She convinced me and my colleague Emilar Vushe Gandhi, APC Africa Policy Coordinator at the time, to organize an African internet governance school in 2013 and since then it has taken place every year. It has evolved over time into a partnership between APC and the African Union Commission and Research ICT Africa.

It is a residential leadership development and learning event that takes place over 5 days. We bring together people who are already working in internet or communications policy in some capacity. We create space for conversation between people from government, civil society, parliaments, regulators, the media, business and the technical community on what in Africa are often referred to as “sensitive topics”. This can be anything from LGBTQ rights to online freedom of expression, corruption, authoritarianism, and accountable governance. We try to create a safe space for deep diving the reasons for the dividing lines between, for example, government and civil society in Africa. It’s very delicate. I love doing it because I feel that it transforms people’s thinking and the way they see one another and one another’s roles. At the end of the process, it is common for a government official to say they now understand better why civil society demands media freedom, and how transparency can be useful in protecting the interests of public servants. And civil society activists have a better understanding of the constraints that state officials face in their day-to-day work. It can be quite a revelation for individuals from civil society to be confronted with the fact that in many respects they have greater freedom to act and speak than civil servants do.

Greene: That’s great. Okay now tell me, what does free speech mean to you?

I think of it as freedom of expression. It’s fundamental. I grew up under Apartheid in South Africa and was active in the struggle for democracy. There is something deeply wrong with being surrounded by injustice, cruelty and brutality and not being allowed to speak about it. Even more so when one's own privilege comes at the expense of the oppressed, as was the case for white South Africans l