National Assembly - 07 September 2006
THURSDAY, 7 SEPTEMBER 2006 __
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY
____
The House met at 14:01.
The Speaker took the Chair and requested members to observe a moment of silence for prayers or meditation.
ANNOUNCEMENTS, TABLINGS AND COMMITTEE REPORTS – see col 000.
NOTICE OF MOTION
The DEPUTY CHIEF WHIP OF THE MAJORITY PARTY: Madam Speaker, I hereby give notice that I intend to move the following motion:
That the House debates the findings of the costing report on the Children’s Act at the earliest possible opportunity.
VISIT BY THE PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA
(Member’s Statement)
Adv Z L MADASA (ANC): Madam Speaker, the ANC notes with appreciation the visit to this country by the President of Russia, His Excellency Vladimir Putin. Russia, in the days of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, had for many years shared a strong political history with our movements.
This historic visit by the President of Russia is a further affirmation of that country’s support for the principles of democracy and the forging of a new bond with South Africa.
The ANC also notes that this visit takes place against the background of South Africa’s possible inclusion on a rotational basis in the United Nations Security Council and Russia has expressed its support.
The visit by President Putin, who was accompanied by an entourage of 100 Russian business magnates, will result in the investment of billions of dollars in the South African economy and further strengthen bilateral trade between the two countries. Thank you.
LABOUR REGULATORY ENVIRONMENT
(Member’s Statement)
Dr P J RABIE (DA): Madam Speaker, the DA notes with pleasure that South Africa is once again the highest-ranking African country on the list of the World bank’s Doing Business report and still within the top 30 countries out of 175 surveyed.
It does raise concern, however, that South Africa, due to the ANC government’s stubborn reluctance to ease business regulations, has slipped a notch to the 29th place overall in the rankings.
Regulatory reform and reducing the cost of doing business are objectives clearly articulated in Asgisa, the South African government’s core strategy for bringing about job creation and economic growth.
Onerous regulations and laws, particularly in respect of labour, hamper increased employment and small business development. Initiatives such as the severe protectionist measures against clothing and textile imports from China, published in the Government Gazette last Friday, are also not in line with the spirit of Asgisa. They are neither conducive to making our market more competitive, nor in the interests of the consumer.
Further methods of regulatory reform in other markets are sure to follow. If government does not act speedily in this regard, South Africa is sure to become less and less competitive in global business rankings. Thank you.
STRATEGIC ARMS DEAL
(Member’s Statement)
Mr V B NDLOVU (IFP): Madam Speaker, the South African strategic arms deal, which was signed in 1999, has continued to create controversial and heated debates. It has also affected the lives and reputations of many prominent politicians and businesspeople, and continues to do so to this very day.
One of the few promising features of this deal was the possibility that it would create a vast number of jobs. This was a very exciting prospect, as these much-needed jobs would come as a welcome relief to many South Africans, considering our very high unemployment rate.
We in the IFP were therefore very disappointed when the hon Minister of Defence stated yesterday that only 13 000 jobs have thus far been created. This is well below expectation and we therefore urge the Minister or other relevant authorities to provide us with the reason for these huge discrepancies.
We also hope that the many lessons learnt form the controversial deal will be taken to heart and that any future arms procurement deals will be conducted in a transparent manner and provide maximum benefits and value for money to South Africans. Thank you.
POLITICAL PARTY FUNDING
(Member’s Statement)
Mr P A GERBER (ANC): Madam Speaker, in report 137 of 2006 of the annual report for 2005-06, and specifically the item Political Parties’ Funding, it is reflected that the UIF, the FD, the PAC and Nadeco failed to submit financial statements for the year ended 31 March 2006 within a statutory deadline, which means on or before 30 June 2006.
Furthermore, the report reflects that the ACDP, the Alliance of Free Democrats, Azapo, the FD, the PIM and UPSA submitted financial statements that did not comply with sections 63 and 64 of the Public Funding and Represented Political Parties Act, Act 103 of 1997, requiring disclosure of how monies were spent.
We continue to pressurise government departments to table their annual reports within the stipulated timeframes in the name of accountability. As the ANC, we are of the view that all political parties must be exemplary in themselves accounting for monies within the timeframe and in line with requirements of all relevant Acts of Parliament. Thank you.
PROTECTION OF TRADITIONAL MARRIAGES
(Member’s Statement)
MR S N SWART (ACDP): Madam Speaker, the ACDP, together with various other organisations, including the Marriage Alliance of SA, consisting of 70 to 80 denominations, and purportedly representing some 20 million people, has consistently stated that the only way to protect the traditional view of marriage is by means of a constitutional amendment, following last year’s Constitutional Court decision.
The ACDP consequently yesterday tabled a Private Member’s Bill seeking a constitutional amendment to protect the common-law definition of marriage as being the voluntary union of a man and a woman. There are important reasons why protecting traditional marriage is in the interests of society. It recognises a social pattern that every civilised society has adopted in order to propagate the human race and raise children.
Laws protecting marriage do not impose a religious belief but are based on rational moral principles and historical evidence showing that the protection of the family promotes the public interest. Cultural anthropology has taught that heterosexual marriages have always been the assumed norm for all societies on earth.
The idea of a homosexual marriage is a modern aberration spurred on by western societies’ liberalised, self-developed value systems. This ideology rejects all moral and cultural knowledge passed down from generations and conflicts with indigenous law in Africa. I thank you.
CHILD SURVIVAL RATE
(Member’s Statement)
Mr L W GREYLING (ID): Madam Speaker, the ID is extremely concerned that in UNICEF’s State of the World’s Children 2006 report, South Africa’s child survival rate was ranked in the bottom third of all countries. A Medical Research Council study puts the under-five mortality rate at 95 per 1 000 births.
This means that one in ten children who are born today will not live to see the World Cup in 2010. This is something we can all be ashamed of and must be determined to change. We certainly have the resources as a middle-income country to change these shocking statistics. We just need the political will.
We must firstly conduct a national inquiry into child deaths in South Africa and conduct confidential inquiries into each individual child death. This will give us the detailed information needed to develop a comprehensive and integrated plan that cuts across all government departments.
What we do know at this stage however is that HIV/Aids and diseases of poverty are the biggest factors in child deaths. All HIV-positive pregnant mothers must be put on the Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission programme and all children in need of ARVs must be given treatment.
The provision of basic services such as water and sanitation has to be prioritised to the areas of greatest need where children needlessly die from waterborne diseases.
Finally, the level of basic health care at too many of our public hospitals is scandalous. The ID has already highlighted the needless deaths of newborn babies at our hospitals and we call on the Ministry of Health to turn hospitals into places of life and not death. I thank you.
DEATH OF MOSES KHUMALO
(Member’s Statement)
Mr H P MALULEKA (ANC): Madam Speaker, our country has once again been robbed of yet another wonderful young musician; this time, the 27-year-old Moses Khumalo, who was found dead, hanging in his flat earlier this week. He was a talented musician who was well ahead of his contemporaries.
He was introduced to the jazz scene as a member of the late Moses Molelekwa’s band. He was also a member of the Soweto Youth Jazz Band that toured places like London and West Africa for three years. His creative talent and remarkable ability saw him performing with the likes of Prince Lengoasa, Sibongile Khumalo, Paul Hanmer, Khaya Mahlangu and other renowned musicians.
As a composer, musician and songwriter, Moses was regarded as one of South Africa’s finest developing artists. The ANC extends our heartfelt condolences to his family, colleagues in the music industry and friends. Thank you. [Applause.]
QUALITY OF TEACHING
(Member’s Statement)
Mr P H K DITSHETELO (UCDP): The UCDP has noted the concern of the Department of Education regarding the quality of teaching and learning. There is very little that has gone according to plan, but of great interest is that the department has owned up and is striving to redress the situation.
The weak link has been found to be in the district offices and to this end efforts are being mounted to rid the department of placeholders, turning them into active participants in the education system. A common national framework regarding the district offices has to be developed so that all holders of a position can have a common purpose. District managers in some areas have always sat back and do not want to be associated with the schools they are in charge of. When the results are bad they always put the blame at the door of the subject advisers and absolve themselves.
We call on the Department of Education to be vigilant and avoid situations in which inexperienced individuals head for management posts and officers are still completing their studies.
While we accept that there has to be broad consultation, we maintain that the buck stops at the door of the department in so far as responsible appointments are made. I thank you.
MARCH AGAINST CIVIL UNION BILL
(Member’s Statement)
Mr L M GREEN (FD): Madam Speaker, the FD wishes to congratulate the Marriage Alliance of SA for organising a pro-marriage march to Parliament on 16 September 2006. The Marriage Alliance of SA has called for this march on 16 September in order to influence the Civil Union Bill.
The proposed Civil Union Bill is intended to function parallel to the Marriage Act and will provide the same legal recognition and benefits for homosexual couples that the Marriage Act does for heterosexual couples.
The Bill also provides for the recognition of domestic partnerships between adults, whether of the same sex or different sexes, who have not concluded a marriage or civil partnership. What this Bill hopes to do is to provide marriage benefits to people who are living together but are not married. The legal consequences of such a partnership will be spelt out and recognised in law once the Bill is passed by Parliament.
The FD calls upon all committed Christian, Muslim and Jewish believers to unite in opposition to the Civil Union Bill. We call upon all believers to flood Parliament with thousands of submissions when invited to do so.
The Marriage Alliance of SA has scheduled marches for seven major South African cities on 16 September 2006 at 10am. And the FD calls upon all believers to attend these marches in their thousands.
The FD believes that the common-law definition of marriage as being “the voluntary union of a man and a woman” must be protected in section 39 of our Constitution. And we call on believers in their millions, across political party lines, to make this demand in writing to Parliament when the Civil Union Bill is debated. I thank you.
NO EASY ACCESS TO CRIME STATISTICS
(Member’s Statement)
Ms D KOHLER-BARNARD (DA): Madam Speaker, Deputy Minister of Safety and Security Susan Shabangu either does not know what her own department’s policy is regarding the release of crime statistics, or she is deliberately trying to mislead the public. Her remarks here yesterday were nothing short of a gross distortion of the facts, because South Africans today do not have easy access to crime statistics, having to turn to alternative sources such as figures released by insurers and security companies.
Does the Deputy Minister really expect homeowners and the media to visit every police station in South Africa to obtain current information on crime when her department is sitting on those very statistics in Pretoria?
Some DA Members of Parliament have tried to obtain statistics in their constituencies and have repeatedly had their requests refused. The former Minister did, indeed, lift the moratorium on crime statistics, but when Charles Nqakula took over as Minister in 2002 he promptly quashed his predecessor’s undertaking, announcing that henceforth crime statistics would only be released once a year. When they are finally released they are between six and 18 months out of date. Their accuracy has been widely questioned and ordinary South Africans have found it almost impossible to get station-level statistics from the police owing to the Minister’s reluctance to release them. [Applause.]
62ND ANNIVERSARY OF ANC YOUTH LEAGUE MARKED
(Member’s Statement)
Mr S E KHOLWANE (ANC): Madam Speaker, this year on 16 June the country celebrated and commemorated the heroic struggle of the youth of 1976, which took the bull by its horns in the struggle for liberation.
In the same spirit our country and nation will be celebrating 62 years of the birth and existence of the African National Congress Youth League. Indeed, 62 years ago young men and women of the soil, that is South Africa, gathered in the Bantu Men’s hall in Johannesburg to establish a giant organisation of the African youth under the banner of the ANC.
This youth organisation became the first, biggest and strongest African youth movement in South Africa and Africa. It became a political home to many African leaders who subsequently took the reigns of power in their own countries.
These young cadres radically changed the ANC and even changed the character of the liberation struggle in South Africa and Africa. They did so by influencing the content of the liberation struggle from a passive resistance approach into a radical and defiant mass mobilisation approach.
Through 60 years of uninterrupted struggle the league has successfully groomed the leadership of the ANC of the calibre of O R Tambo, Dorothy Nyembe, Nelson Mandela, Bertha Gxowa, Walter Sisulu and many more.
Through decades of the struggle the ANC Youth League has continuously brought light into the life of the ANC and the broader liberation movement. It has done so so that through generations of independent-thinking young lions and through an unwavering display of youth vibrancy and temperament, and the rejuvenation of the ANC, today the onus is on the present generation of youth and its leadership to follow the aforementioned examples of the rich history of youth struggle and activism and to take their cue from these gallant fighters. Long live the ANC Youth League, long live! [Applause.]
HEALTH ISSUES WITH IMMEDIATE SOLUTIONS OVERLOOKED
(Member’s Statement)
Dr R RABINOWITZ (IFP): Madam Speaker, whilst certain matters regarding the health of the nation are understandably attracting high-profile attention, such as the government’s failure to manage the Aids pandemic and the emergence of a deadly strain of TB, there are other serious health issues that are being overlooked and for which there are immediate solutions.
One of these is the emergence of a strain of gonorrhoea that is resistant to medicines currently prescribed for its treatment in public health institutions. The rate of the increased resistance is highest in KwaZulu- Natal, but it is occurring in all nine provinces.
The second is government’s failure to manage sexually transmitted diseases, which, if done, would massively reduce the incidence of HIV. The third is the continued exploitation of the public by certain medical schemes, with government’s blessing. The fourth is the almost complete lack of accountability by practitioners operating under the banner of the Allied Health Professions Council of SA.
Therefore, the IFP recommends that urgent steps be taken to use a different antibiotic that has been recommended by the World Health Organisation for the treatment of gonorrhoea; to appoint independent health ombudspersons in all provinces; to decentralise authority and accountability to provincial health departments, and to make programmes less dependent on conditional grants, which appear to be too complicated for the Health department to handle under the current constitutional dispensation. Thank you.
CLEAN WATER AND SANITATION
(Member’s Statement)
Mr M R MOHLALOGA (ANC): Madam Speaker, the provision of clean water and sanitation to all is one of the core programmes of the ANC-led government. The Department of Water Affairs and Forestry, the Mpumalanga Provincial Government, the Delmas Municipality and Ekangala Water Board have joined forces to provide clean water and sanitation to the people of the region.
This programme will include the development of a water service and a groundwater plan. Discussions have also commenced with Rand Water Board to assist in acquiring a pipeline. This is a clear demonstration of the government’s commitment to the integrated and co-ordinated implementation of programmes aimed at ensuring the improvement of the quality of life of all our people.
It is, amongst other things, interventions like this that strengthen our conviction as people that tomorrow will be better than today. We urge the ANC-led government to ensure the active involvement of the people throughout these programmes. Halala ANC! [Applause.]
MINISTER OF HEALTH DECLINES INVITATION TO SPEAK ON HIV/AIDS
(Member’s Statement)
Mr G R MORGAN (DA): Madam Speaker, the DA notes with disappointment that the Minister of Health, Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, and the MEC for health in the Western Cape have turned down an invitation to address the Cape Town City Council on the government’s response on HIV/Aids. The apparent reason was a scheduling problem, but there has been no offer by the Minister to find a new date.
It must be noted that the motion requesting the council to invite the Minister and her Western Cape counterpart was put forward by an ANC councillor and was endorsed by the rest of the council. This followed an earlier motion by the council, put forward by Mayor Helen Zille, endorsing the Treatment Action Campaign’s five-point plan on HIV/Aids.
If the hon Minister of Health insists on remaining in her position, and if President Mbeki insists on keeping Dr Tshabalala-Msimang in the position of Minister of Health, then the Minister must be upfront with the public and elected representatives of our people. The Minister was invited to attend a session of the council and she should have accepted the offer even if it could not happen in this week.
South Africa is facing a massive challenge in dealing with HIV/Aids and there are serious question marks surrounding the government’s ability to respond to the crisis. For this reason, it is understandable that elected representatives, led in this case by the ANC, wanted the opportunity to engage the Minister about these issues. If the Minister is so confident about her performance and the performance of her department, then she should allow herself to be quizzed on a regular basis at all levels of government. Thank you.
NATIONAL MATHEMATICS WEEK
(Member’s Statement)
Prof I J MOHAMED (ANC): Madam Speaker, we congratulate the Department of Education on having another National Mathematics Week. This initiative is to be commended as it highlights the importance of mathematics in the development of science, engineering, medicine and technology; and hence its central significance in developing our country.
The Deputy President took the initiative through Jipsa – the Joint Initiative for Priority Skills Acquisition – to harness and secure the development of engineers, technicians, scientists and other highly skilled people in order to meet the prioritised technical needs of our country. These skills are crucial for the economic development of our country and will help to set in motion and accelerate the development of factories and infrastructure as well as the development of machinery and tools needed for this purpose.
It is clear that if we are to provide employment and accelerate the provision thereof, and provide housing and hospitals and other infrastructure that our country needs, this initiative is important and should be used to maximum effect and possibly be expanded.
The ANC thanks the Minister of Education on this initiative. We trust that it will eventually be extended to all learners in the school and include a large number of schools. Thank you. [Applause.]
Dr C P MULDER: Madam Speaker, on a point of order: While the hon Mr Green was making his statement, the hon Mr Asmal, on more than one occasion, referred to Mr Green as a bigot - and I would like to know if that’s parliamentary or not?
The SPEAKER: The first problem I have is that you are raising this only now at this point and did not raise it at the point when it happened. But obviously, if he said that the hon member is a bigot that is unparliamentary. Hon Asmal, would you like to withdraw that?
Prof A K ASMAL: If you say it’s unparliamentary, I withdraw it.
CIVIL UNION BILL
(Minister’s Response)
The DEPUTY MINISTER OF CORRECTIONAL SERVICES: Thank you, hon Speaker. I want to respond to the two statements that were made regarding the Civil Union Bill that will be introduced in Parliament. I assume that when we drafted the Constitution – all of us, the majority of us who are here were part of that process – we did not draft the Constitution for some and not for others. When we make legislation in this House, we don’t make legislation for some and not for others.
One of the biggest problems we had before 1994 was the exclusion of some people and the discrimination against some people. The introduction of this Bill does not take away anything from anybody. It adds to our democracy, it adds to our constitutional democracy, and it adds to the rights of people to choose. Whether it is palatable or unpalatable to some of us, well, that is also debatable and we can talk about that.
Also, when we abide by a Constitutional Court ruling we are all told we must respect the rule of law, that the Constitutional Court is the highest court in the land and it has made a ruling. The onus is on us to then come up with legislation to give effect to that ruling. When that is done by any department or any government, it is then frowned upon by others. I just want us to look at that and to re-examine where we are sitting, to re- examine our role as Parliament, as the highest decision-making body in the land.
I don’t think that we should prejudge the outcomes of anything, but I really think we must look at that and see where we come from, and particularly go to the equality clause that is enshrined in the Bill of Rights, which excludes or precludes discrimination against anybody on 16 grounds. I don’t think we should impose what we as individuals or as groups think on others, and infringe on their right to choose. Thank you. [Applause.]
PROBLEMS WITH DELMAS DRINKING WATER
(Minister’s Response)
The MINISTER OF WATER AFFAIRS AND FORESTRY: Thank you, hon Speaker. I would like to thank the hon member for the statement, and to say that it is encouraging to note that hon members are vigilant and are following delivery by government on the ground. It is regrettable that lives were lost during the problems that we had in Delmas. Indeed, one death is one death too many, but lessons can be learned from the problems that we faced in Delmas that day.
Firstly, there is the fact that it is important for all of us who work with municipalities to ensure that our infrastructure is serviced, is maintained and is repaired at all times. One other lesson that has come out of this is the importance of partners: the intergovernmental relations that had to be established to work around the problem.
I must say that the government of Mpumalanga, through its department of agriculture and land affairs, its department of local government and housing and the Enkangala District Municipality, as well as the Delmas Local Municipality, has been very good and had active partners in ensuring not only that we dealt at that time with the emergency, but that a turnaround strategy was put in place to ensure that this problem does not arise again.
What this has done is cause the department to have to look at the overall problem. What are the problems of drinking water quality in the country? We have identified those problems, and we are working with the municipalities to ensure that they are able to manage their drinking water quality. We have a system in place currently running in the Free State in which you can go from municipality to municipality and actually tell what the quality of the water is. That will enable municipalities to then start improving their water quality in those areas. I thank you, Madam Speaker.
HEALTH ISSUES WITH IMMEDIATE
SOLUTIONS OVERLOOKED
INVITATION TO MINISTER OF HEALTH TO MEETING ORGANISED BY CITY OF CAPE TOWN
(Minister’s Responses)
The DEPUTY MINISTER OF HEALTH: Thank you, Madam Speaker. I want to thank the hon Rabinowitz for her statement and to say that, indeed, the issue of drug resistance is a concern to us as a department and as a country. That is why we spend a lot of time educating our community about the importance of sticking to treatment, because if you do interrupt treatment, the problem of multidrug resistance does arise.
On the issue of sexually transmitted infections, I also want to agree with her that this is a very important area, especially against the backdrop of HIV/Aids, because we know that HIV/Aids is itself a sexually transmitted infection. So it becomes very important for us to monitor sexually transmitted infections. In fact, we have a very good programme in the Department of Health where, through our youth-friendly centres, we manage the issue of sexually transmitted infections. We have found, actually, that the prevalence of these infections is dropping, because we are treating them. But if there is resistance to the treatment for gonorrhoea - as you have said – I am sure this is something that we should take up.
On the issue of TB, again, this is an issue that we are very concerned about, and fortunately the department has put together a crisis plan and this plan is being managed by our provinces. With the participation of Members of Parliament, I think that we can all assist to make sure that people get tested who cough consistently for two weeks, who are losing weight, who are sweating at night, because those could be symptoms of TB. Those people must go for testing so that they can be treated on time. TB is curable.
On the issue of the devolution of powers to provinces, we have decided together with Cabinet that we will indeed devolve powers to provinces. The CEOs are getting greater powers and, in fact, Gauteng has already begun this process. This will make decisions much easier and quicker, because they are going to be happening at hospital level.
To the DA: I am not too sure why you have brought up the matter of the invitation of the Minister of Health to a meeting organised by the City of Cape Town, because you yourself have indicated that there was a problem with scheduling. I don’t know why you are bringing it up here now, as if it is a huge issue. If there was a problem with scheduling that doesn’t mean the Minister of Health has refused to go to address the council.
What I have called for – and I will repeat this to the members here - is that health is too big an issue for us to be confrontational. It doesn’t help if we are confrontational. We should all work together towards a common goal. [Time expired.] [Applause.]
CONSIDERATION OF REPORT OF AD HOC COMMITTEE ON OPERATIONAL PROBLEMS IN THE OFFICE OF THE PUBLIC PROTECTOR
Prof A K ASMAL: Madam Speaker, this is rather perfunctory applause, I must say. [Applause.] On behalf of the committee, I have the pleasure, as the servant of this House, to introduce the report to this House. The House will be aware that the Ad Hoc Committee on Operational Problems in the Office of the Public Protector was established by the Speaker on 31 July
- The Speaker’s decision was subsequently ratified by the National Assembly at its first sitting after the recess on 15 August 2006.
The committee’s terms of reference were very specific namely to enquire into operational problems being experienced by the Office of the Public Protector, as reported to the Speaker by the Public Protector. I shall come back in a moment to the significance of the fact that this process was initiated at the request of the Public Protector himself. The Public Protector, in addition to being one of the state institutions supporting constitutional democracy - the so-called Chapter 9 institutions
- plays a key role in our democracy of protecting the public against administrative irregularities or unfair treatment. The office does so by investigating any conduct in state affairs or the public administration in this sphere of government on receipt of a complaint from the public.
For the Public Protector to perform this watchdog role, the office must be able to act without fear, favour or prejudice. It is for this reason that the Office of the Public Protector is given the status of an independent institution, which in the performance of its functions is subject only to the Constitution and the law. The Constitution states unequivocally that no person or organ of state may interfere with its functioning. Further, all organs of state - and Parliament is an organ of state - are enjoined to assist and protect the Public Protector, to ensure its independence, its impartiality, its dignity, and, as the Speaker has asked us, its effectiveness.
The National Assembly, however, is additionally given a very particular function in relation to the Public Protector, and all the independent Chapter 9 institutions are accountable to the National Assembly. They are accountable to us. They must report to us at least once a year on the activities and the performance of their functions. The National Assembly, in particular, also has a role in the appointment of the office holders of these institutions and in their removal from office on grounds of misconduct, incapacity or incompetence. The National Assembly, therefore, is on the one hand enjoined to hold the Office of the Public Protector accountable for the performance of its functions, whilst at the same time also having the responsibility of assisting and protecting it to ensure its independence, impartiality, dignity and effectiveness.
It is in this context that, faced with reports of operational problems impacting on the ability of the Public Protector to carry out its functions optimally, the National Assembly and this committee have been called upon to play a unique role, an exceptional role - which has never happened in our history - in conducting an inquiry into the reported problems and proposing measures to resolve or remedy these problems.
It is very important to note, therefore, that this inquiry was launched in response to a specific appeal by the Public Protector in person to the Speaker. The National Assembly was effectively being called upon to assist and to protect the office in a very concrete way. The Speaker, with great respect, must be lauded for the speed with which she responded to the Public Protector’s request and set up this ad hoc committee. The urgency with which this inquiry was launched and concluded reflects the recognition by the National Assembly of the vital role the Office of the Public Protector plays in our democracy. In performing this task assigned to it, it was quite clear to the committee that it was not intended that, in conducting its inquiry, it should assume the role of a judicial inquiry or a tribunal or a court of law or something of this kind. In other words, it was not the function of this committee to investigate and make findings on the allegations and counter-allegations between the Public Protector and his deputy that had been receiving so much publicity.
The committee’s function, very pertinently, was to assess the extent of operational problems in the Office of the Public Protector either giving rise to, or resulting from the tensions that had surfaced between the Public Protector and his deputy, and to make recommendations to overcome operational problems. The committee in the course of its investigation engaged separately and exhaustively with the Public Protector and the Deputy Public Protector, and subsequently held a joint meeting with them to clarify differing perceptions and versions of events and to seek common ground on possible resolutions and remedies.
The details of the committee’s findings and the resultant recommendations are dealt with in the report, which has already been circulated to hon members. The committee established that a range of operational problems did indeed exist or had arisen in the office and that they were of such a nature that they were unavoidably impacting on the ability of the office to perform its constitutional functions. The fact that there are a range of problems in the Office of the Public Protector should not, however, be taken as an indicator at this time that the office, at the national and regional levels, is failing to carry out its core functions. The office is still getting through a remarkable caseload. In the 2004-05 financial year alone, for instance, the office disposed of no fewer than 17 539 cases. This figure is immeasurably larger than any issues discussed by the High Court. This is a significant achievement and deserves due recognition, although the backlog on its books deserves further scrutiny.
Some of the identified problems already existed prior to the appointment of the Deputy Public Protector on 1 December 2005, and may have contributed to the tensions that subsequently arose between the two office holders, while others clearly developed as a result of the progressively strained relations between them.
It gives me no pleasure to report that the committee found that both at times displayed a lack of judgment and discretion in how they responded to the developing crisis in their working relations. It gives us no pleasure to state that they allowed their personal differences to override their primary responsibility, as the appointed office holders, specially appointed by statute, to protect the dignity and the integrity of the institution that had been placed in their care.
Once again, the detailed findings of the committee are covered in the report. There are 16 recommendations and some conclusions and some very important findings in the report. Allow me very briefly then to highlight some of the committee’s key concerns.
The committee was particularly concerned at the fact that the tensions that developed between the Public Protector and his deputy appear to have their origins in a relatively insignificant administrative matter that they should have been able to resolve internally. Even when these problems assumed larger dimensions - in fact, there was a remarkable escalation - it was incumbent on them to exercise the responsibility entrusted to them to find appropriate solutions at all costs and not to resort to appeals to external authorities that did not have the jurisdiction or the competence to intervene. Their actions appeared to reflect an insufficient grasp of the significance of the constitutional status of the office as an independent institution.
A further concern was the apparent uncertainty about the nature of the legal relationship as head and deputy head of the office. This confusion can possibly be ascribed to the lack of legal clarity in the relevant Act, which does not specify the intended role of the Deputy Public Protector, but merely provides that the Public Protector may delegate powers to the Deputy Public Protector and may act in his or her absence; this despite the fact that the Deputy Public Protector, like the Public Protector, is formally appointed by the President on the recommendation of the National Assembly, although without the special majority requirement as required for the Public Protector.
The Deputy Public Protector was in fact assigned largely administrative functions, also due to the absence of a chief executive officer. The committee has clarified the nature of the legal relationship between them and has emphasised that it is the Public Protector in person who is accountable for the functioning of the office and must assume overall responsibility. Nevertheless, the Deputy Public Protector should clearly be delegated powers appropriate to her high office and directly related to the core competencies of the office.
In conclusion, the committee is confident that its detailed recommendations, which are common to the House, which were unanimously accepted and adopted by the committee, represent necessary corrective and confidence-building measures, which would substantively assist in strengthening the Office of the Public Protector to enable it to perform its constitutional functions optimally. The committee - further recommends and we do so with due deliberations – that consideration be given to reconvening the committee before the end of March 2007, to assess progress made and to determine what further action may be required at that time to ensure that the office is able to function effectively.
I will be failing in my duty, and this is exceptional, if I do not refer to the way in which Parliament has responded rapidly to this particular matter. The Speaker provided virtually instantaneous response, the committee acted in a nonpartisan way and, of course, Mr Hahndiek, as the Secretary to the National Assembly, and the staff - legal, research and administration staff - worked at weekends and worked overnight, because of the driven chairperson of the committee and, in fact, provided an extraordinary service to the committee. I thank hon members for their attention and trust that the committee’s recommendations will, in the interests of this key institution in our democracy, receive the unanimous support of the House. [Applause.]
There was no debate.
The DEPUTY CHIEF WHIP OF THE MAJORITY PARTY: Speaker, I was just finishing doing more than a perfunctory applause. We move that the report be adopted.
Motion agreed to.
Report accordingly adopted.
THE NONPAYMENT OF MAINTENANCE ORDERS FOR THE MAINTENANCE OF CHILDREN AND THE PROBLEMS RELATED THERETO
(Subject for Discussion)
Ms J A SEMPLE: Madam Speaker, we’ve had so many debates on maintenance. What is there new to add? This is the comment that has been made to me. This is exactly the point. We talk about the same issues year after year and nothing changes.
The DA hopes that this debate will result in some commitments from the Ministry for Justice and Constitutional Development, which will change the way in which maintenance issues are handled. We MPs are the lucky ones. We just talk about the problems. But what about the people: the men, the women and the children - especially the children - who have to live with the issues around the nonpayment of maintenance? Nothing changes for them either, but they are expected to survive and carry on regardless of whether the maintenance owing to them is paid or not.
The same problems occur across all communities in South Africa regardless of their economic status or where the families live. These children still need to have a home with food and clothes, to go to school, to play games and to do all the things those children do. But the parent looking after them, usually the mother, feels that she is failing as a parent because she cannot provide these things regardless of whether it is her responsibility or not.
Some of these people are with us here today, and I would like to welcome Wendy and other members of the Bellville maintenance support group. Wendy believes that there is a whole generation of children growing up not trusting adults or believing in law and order, because their experience is that no one has supported them or their mothers - not their fathers, not the justice system, nor the democratic system that made the laws which are not implemented properly.
Most defaulters would pay if dealt with firmly and quickly, but the lax and long-winded approach of the courts teaches them the tricks to get away without paying. If you could get away without paying maintenance and if there were enough postponements without any consequences, wouldn’t you also be a defaulter?
What is it about having children that makes them yours while you are still in a relationship, but once that relationship breaks up means you are no longer responsible for them? Why do men regard the maintenance they are paying as maintenance for their wives? The majority of maintenance defaulters are men, so my apologies to the good guys out there.
Maintenance is withheld as a punishment for the women, but it is the children who suffer. There should an understanding that men are obliged to support their children regardless of their relationship with their mothers. Wendy claims that her ex-husband has been consistently using the maintenance issue as a tool to exert power over her. He only pays when he feels like it and pays what he feels like paying.
On behalf of the women out there who are suffering because of the incompetence of our court system, we would like to know why immediate action cannot be taken against a maintenance defaulter who is legally bound to pay agreed and court-ordered maintenance when default takes place.
The constant delays and postponements send a signal that courts do not have any interest in the welfare of our women and children. Every delay is a day without life’s necessities and a day of lost pay and extra transport costs for women who already have nothing.
What about Ester Dlamini, who has to borrow R36 from her neighbour in Zola, Soweto, to travel to the Johannesburg Family Court in Market Street with her children, aged five and seven, every month? Sadly, she cannot pay back the neighbour the money she owes when she gets home because there was no money waiting for her at that office. Every delay compounds the problem as the arrears add up, and eventually the ex-husbands argue that they cannot pay as the arrears are too much. Meanwhile, they have been enjoying the good life, going on holiday and buying a new car during all the postponements.
On the front page of the Weekend Argus of 18 November 2005, Mr Hisham Mohamed of the Western Cape justice department claimed that maintenance defaulters would be arrested. It has not happened. Court officials claim it is not possible to arrest maintenance defaulters. After endless queues and rude and disinterested maintenance officials at court, a subpoena is eventually issued, but invariably is not delivered as the sheriff could not find the address. “We can’t find the guy”, even though his home address, telephone numbers and car details are supplied.
If things go well and the subpoena is delivered, a court date, usually months in the future, is set and then the postponements start: magistrates on a go-slow owing to car allowance problems; prosecutors off sick, who change at every appearance, who don’t arrive for work, who haven’t read the files, who struggle to speak the language of the offenders, who simply aren’t interested; appointments are not kept; and months turn into years. Women and their children are treated like dirt and chased away to keep the backlog down.
While all this is going on, children are supposed to carry on living but they are not getting the money to which they are entitled. Senior magistrates have argued that jail is not the answer, as defaulters will not earn money when they are behind bars.
But perhaps, Deputy Minister, the threat of imprisonment will do the trick. The Ministry needs to put their foot down and step in. Maintenance defaulters need to pay up, or feel the full force of the law. Otherwise, we are failing the children of this country. [Applause.]
Ms M V MERUTI: Madam Speaker, hon members, comrades, ladies and gentlemen …
… mme motsadi yo o kileng a ima dikgwedi tse robongwe, a amusa, a lala ka tlala, a oka ngwana ka lerato le le makatsang, mme yo o itseng botlhoko jwa go lebelela ngwana mo matlhong, a tshwere ke tlala, mme go sena se o se mo nayang. Mme yo o tshwarang thipa ka fa bogaleng fa bana ba fetogile dikhutsana, rrabona a ntse a tshela. Mmamogale gare ga bagale, yo o kgonang go baya tau botsetse.
Borra, fa o kgaogana le mme, o latlhelang bana? Ke mang yo o tshwanetseng go rwala maikarabelo a gago? Se fetole bana dikhutsana o ntse o tshela. A ga o tlhabiwe ke ditlhong fa o bona borre ba tsamaya le bana ba bona, go rena boitumelo, bana ba tlhokometswe sentle?
Bana ba maAforika, botho jwa rona bo ile kae? A re lebetse gore motho ke motho ka batho ba bangwe? A re ipeleng ka bana ba rona, ke baeteledipele ba ka moso. Bana ke boikarabelo jwa batsadi boo babedi. Goreng jaanong rre a tshwanetse go gatelelwa ke molao go tlhokomela bana ba gagwe? A re buseng serodumo sa rona. (Translation of Setswana paragraphs follows.)
[… a woman who has been pregnant for nine months, breastfeeding, going to bed on an empty stomach, caring for her child with an amazing love, a woman who has experienced the pain of looking into her child’s eyes while she is hungry and yet knowing that there is nothing she can give her; a woman who protects her orphaned children though their father is still alive – such a woman is a champion among champions, who is very brave.
Gentlemen, when you divorce your wives, why do you abandon your children as well? Who is supposed to take over your responsibility? Do not let your children become orphans while you are still alive. Don’t you feel ashamed when you see other fathers walking along with their children and taking care of them with lots of love?
African children, where is our humanity? Have we forgotten that a person is a person through other people? Let us be proud of our children, they are the leaders of tomorrow. Children are the responsibility of both parents. Now why does the law have to force the father to take care of his children? Let us regain our dignity.]
The pathway to a home is short but winding, lined with mud-filled dongas and water deposits from recent rain. A throng of children playing outside her home, amid the intermittent cackle of laughter and the general gaiety of the neighbourhood, belies the poverty and desperation that has befallen many of the families of this farmyard - and this is a true story.
Most of the women on this farm are single mothers. Some are as young as 16 years. They have the responsibility of rearing children of their own. Where are the fathers? Do they not have a conscience? Bringing up children is the responsibly of both parents.
To alleviate the plight of these mothers, the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development has come up with the new Isondlo maintenance project, launched by the Justice Minister, Comrade Bridgette Mabandla. The Port Elizabeth magistrate’s office has been identified as one of the areas for a pilot project. It is aimed at tracing all maintenance defaulters and also allocating unclaimed funds that have been lying idle in the department coffers for many years.
At three izimbizo during February 2006 cheques for unclaimed money were handed out to 172 Cape Town mothers by the Minister for Justice and Constitutional Development. The department has also published the names of 823 people in Philippi, Mitchells Plain and Khayelitsha who have not claimed child support payments and made it to maintenance courts. With the help of NGOs the department managed to trace 310 of them. These women combined are owed more R500 000 in child support payments they have not collected. The Minister also informed Parliament that on the department’s books there was the sum of R80 million in unclaimed maintenance funds nationwide.
The Isondlo project is not only about money, but emotional support and a sense of belonging. Let us take care of our beloved children, the future leaders of our country. If you are divorced then do not also divorce your children. Let us speak to communities, our societies and ourselves about the responsibilities we have.
Operation Isondlo will also focus on getting the provincial governments to work together to ensure the speedy processing of court orders. Throughout history poverty has always affected women and children the most. Social grants are very often the only income in poverty-stricken families and this results in entire families relying on these grants to raise their standard of living.
The Constitution of our Republic does not only recognise the rights of children, but also guarantees respect and protection of these rights. Among these rights is the right to a standard of living that is good for the physical, mental and spiritual development of the child. Hence, our democratic government led by the ANC has always been guided by the principle of “in the best interests of the child” in dealing with all matters that involve children, including maintenance and related matters.
The rights of children and standards to which our democratic government should aspire are also concisely and fully articulated in the international women rights treaty and in the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Which international instrument must also give content to the very legal duty of mothers and fathers to maintain their children?
However, the painful reality remains that certain fathers have failed to pay maintenance in respect of their children, despite their legal duty and even court orders. This unfortunate situation places disproportionate burdens on mothers to maintain their children with very limited, if any, resources. Sometimes these mothers will be required to go out to look for work, as a result of which they may not be able to provide child care and supervision for their children.
When maintenance is not paid, children suffer as they may not have enough food, may not be able to see the doctor when they are sick and even have outstanding school fees. Surely this undermines our Constitution, which provides that every child has the right to basic nutrition, shelter, basic health care services and social services?
There is much pain and suffering in our society because children are being abandoned. As the government, we have to continually ask ourselves whether we as Members of Parliament, and even our staff members in the different departments entrusted with the role of advancing the interests of our people through the principle of Batho Pele, are taking responsibility for our own children.
Ke raya le bona bale ba oneng o ntse o ba itatola ba ba kwa metseng kwa. A o a ba tlhokomela? [I am also referring to those children in the villages that you rejected. Are you maintaining them?]
Having recognised the hardships experienced by mothers getting fathers of children to pay maintenance, our democratic government led by the ANC has embarked on various initiatives to improve the maintenance system. These include the appointment of maintenance investigators and maintenance officials.
Our democratic government makes these strategic interventions as inspired by the Freedom Charter, which provides, among other things, that South Africa belongs to all, even those who are the most vulnerable in our society, like women and children. But the culture of nonpayment of maintenance on the part of certain fathers continues to undermine our constitutional democracy. Hence, we must go beyond court interventions and encourage fathers who are not complying to maintain their children without being forced to do so by the courts.
This requires building a sense of responsibility in all parents to appreciate and understand the importance of payment of maintenance in respect of our children. We must begin to encourage and ensure that the duty to maintain our children does not only derive from our law, but also emanates from inside ourselves.
A re bontshe botho joo, borre tsaya maikarabelo a go tlhokomela bana ba lona. [Let us show that humanity; gentlemen, please be responsible for your children.]
I thank you.
Ms S C VOS: Chairperson, in my 12 years in Parliament we have discussed this issue time and time again, and it is a good thing that we do so again today.
The issue of the nonpayment of child maintenance - for the most part by men
- is getting worse and is the root cause of most of the social ills in our country.
There is no doubt that it is the cause of the growing feminisation of poverty in South Africa, early childhood behavioural deviance and delinquency leading later to serious crime, a crippling reliance on social welfare grants and unyielding pressure on the fiscus. The Gender Commission reports year after year that complaints relating to child maintenance arrests flood their offices.
The reality continues that there is a deep-seated pathology that too many men in this country – including, I am told, men in this House – do not pay maintenance, or do not feel obligated to pay sufficient maintenance or do everything possible to actively avoid paying child maintenance.
The Maintenance Act is hardly ever fully implemented in our courts. Some problems include the following: the inability of our courts to cope with the sheer weight of applications, maintenance officers and maintenance prosecutors lack skills in training, there are too few maintenance investigators, maintenance cases are continually postponed because respondents cannot be traced, self-employed respondents hide their assets and income to pay less or not at all, courts fail to execute maintenance orders via civil procedures, and deductions from respondents’ salaries and wages are not paid to the claimant. Many women just give up and have no confidence in our system of justice in this regard.
Our jails could not cope with the number of men who should be incarcerated for avoiding and evading their obligations and responsibilities to their children and to the mothers of their children.
Perhaps we should consider whether it is time to erect special army-type tent barracks throughout the country to allow our courts to imprison these men over weekends, to name and shame them in every city, town and village and to force them to do community work over weekends, just as a start. This is done in many countries. Many states in the US use weekend incarceration of child maintenance offenders very effectively.
It is time we stopped this abuse of human rights and stopped talking and started showing the power of the state in enforcing its laws and its commitment to entrenching a culture of respect for the obligations and responsibilities of parenthood. Thank you, Madam Chairperson. [Applause.]
Mrs P DE LILLE: Chairperson, it has been six years since the Maintenance Act of 1998 was passed, and still this law is not doing justice to the paper that it is printed on. There are so many women who are not even aware of this legislation. Independent research has found that nonperformance of maintenance payments with the courts ranges between 65% and 90%. This simply means that women are not receiving the money that they should be receiving.
The problems experienced with the maintenance system are basic and, until we get the basics right, the system will not work. The lack of proper implementation makes the Maintenance Act of 1998 a sham. This Act is supposed to be one of the victories for women, but has yet to perform as it should. The ID hopes that the Minister for Justice and Constitutional Development and her department will rectify the issue as soon as possible and that we don’t have to wait another six years for proper implementation. I thank you, Madam Chairperson. [Applause.] Mr S N SWART: Chairperson, the ACDP shares the view that an effective system of ensuring timeous and sufficient maintenance payment is one of the most effective means of addressing poverty.
We are therefore concerned when the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development acknowledges that even the specialist family courts are not able to deliver satisfactory maintenance services. The situation in ordinary court is far worse, notwithstanding commendable efforts to improve the situation.
It is disgraceful that tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of maintenance defaulters get away, leaving women and children in situations of abject poverty.
Whilst we appreciate the attempts to address shortcomings with the appointment of additional investigators and prosecutors, much more can and must be done.
The ACDP calls on fathers to take their maintenance obligations seriously - pay your maintenance on time because it is the right thing to do. And we continue to support all government attempts to shine a light on defaulting payments. If the light doesn’t help, then a bit of heat will serve the purpose. We support those efforts. Thank you, Chairperson.
Ms J E SOSIBO: Chairperson, hon members, the nonpayment of maintenance orders remains a big challenge for the SA Police Service. This is because it is commonly regarded not as a public matter but as a private domestic problem. There is relevant legislation that informs court maintenance orders which involve section 28 of the Constitution, the Child Care Act, Act 74 of 1983 and the Domestic Violence Act, Act 116 of 1998. Similarly, the position of the ANC as articulated in the 51st conference resolution seeks to address domestic violence and build family support systems.
It must be noticeable that a maintenance order is a court decision that considers the rights and obligations of the parties concerned. It regulates conduct along the lines of relevant legislation. In this regard, there are some circumstances in which the court may make an order about maintenance. This suggests that a maintenance order arises when the parties are no longer able to support each other or their children. But sometimes the parties in question could even agree on maintenance.
Section 28(2) of the Constitution places the child’s best interests as of paramount importance in every matter concerning the child. This section includes many rights, such as the right of the child to family and parental care, basic health services, nutrition and legal counsel, where necessary. Furthermore, this section states that children are to be protected against maltreatment, abuse and labour practices that exploit them. It is in this regard that the legal position of children seems to be of significant importance.
However, it is not only the Constitution that protects children. There is also the Child Care Act, Act 74 of 1983, which deals with matters such as the adoption and appearance of children in court. It allows judicial interventions in respect of parental authority over children. It appears that the Act contains provisions concerning family law as well as provisions concerning criminal law and procedural law in the context of the Domestic Violence Act, Act 116 of 1998, which serves to protect children and other family members. This legislation is aimed at giving legal protection from domestic abuse, particularly of women and children.
As suggested, nonpayment of maintenance could be punishable by the court if it is found there were no justifiable grounds for the noncompliance with an order. This speaks to the role of the SA Police Service in monitoring the implementation of the court order. This is a big challenge because nonpayment of maintenance is regarded as a domestic family matter.
Whilst it is primarily the role of the maintenance officers and investigators to fulfil this function, the SAPS has the skills and infrastructure to assist in this regard. The Departments of Justice and Social Development and the SA Police Service should work more closely together to ensure that with a combination of their available resources and information they more effectively trace and issue warrants of arrest against these persons.
Indeed, other relevant legislation is similarly seen to be difficult to implement. This is with regard to the guiding role of legislation to the police officers in ensuring that there is compliance with the court order. There is a need for police officers to play a more interventionist role, including offering advice and assistance to the complainant and making more arrests.
The nonpayment of maintenance orders should be a police issue, rather than it being treated it as a private matter. Another challenge is that the complainant might not continue to see the matter as requiring police and court involvement due to fear of threats and trauma and suddenly withdraw from reporting the matter to the police.
On the other hand, the police officials, if they are men, might tend to see nonpayment of maintenance order as a subordinate matter, requiring women to assert their circumstances. This is because of gender inequalities and the perceived inferior position of women in society. It is a fact that we are living in a patriarchal society, therefore some SAPS members could sympathise more with the men – perpetrators in the light of gender violence. But it could be the other way round. In this regard, the SAPS should be sensitised to treat these cases with humanity and seriousness. In the same view, family members and communities need to assist the police as witnesses, victims and perpetrators and not to see issues of this nature as purely private family matters. These are public matters aimed at transforming society. It is at the family level that the position of women and children can be understood.
As recently as last month, we remembered the heroic struggle of the 1956 Women’s March. This struggle was meant to place the position of women at the centre. Today, when it comes to violence against women and children, there are special courts that deal with cases of this nature, namely family violence courts, children’s courts, sexual offences courts, etc.
Legislation has made it possible, as from November 1999, to enable the state to attach salaries of parents who do not honour child maintenance payment agreements. The country is in a position to track down parents who avoid the responsibility of supporting their children and thus enforce due payments.
In conclusion, the SA Police Service’s role in dealing with nonpayment of maintenance orders is beyond doubt. Its role has been significant despite any criticism and the difficulties of policing domestic matters. Communities must assist the police with information and ensure the implementation of court decisions in order to build peaceful and supportive family values. I thank you, Chairperson. [Applause.] Ms S RAJBALLY: Madam Deputy Chair, we have a collective constitutional duty towards the children of South Africa to ensure that they are protected and provided for. However, the reality of child neglect, abuse and abandonment is a harsh reality in every community. It is owing to this duty and consciousness that we pass legislation, to govern the care and protection of our children. Another harsh reality is that incorporating these statutes into people’s daily lives is the greatest challenge.
Today, we address one aspect in which our children are failed daily and that is the issue of maintenance. We have the statutes, the courts and even the police, yet parents continue to neglect providing for their responsibilities.
I feel that with regard to both state and customary marriages a consideration in the dissolution of both these types of marriage should be to induce an automatic inspection of dependants and duties enforced with dissolution. For children born out of wedlock, maintenance duties should be legally incumbent at birth and registration. For those who are already neglecting to pay maintenance, harsh punishment should, however, serve as a good deterrent.
We, however, also need to take cognisance of the parents who use their children’s maintenance for their own benefit to manipulate the other parent and to ask for a larger amount in maintenance, threatening the abandonment of the children if this is not received.
The nonpayment of maintenance creates street children, who risk their lives running through traffic, begging for a few cents to buy food. These are some of the serious offences that we need to eliminate in order to guarantee the security and safety of all our children in South Africa.
Sithi kwabesilisa: Hambani niye kokhokha, siyanicela. Ngiyabonga. [And our message to men is that we plead with them to go and pay maintenance. [Thank you.]]
Mr L M GREEN: Chairperson, Article 27 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child requires the state to recognise the right of every child to a standard of living that is adequate for the child’s physical, spiritual, moral and social development and to take all appropriate measures in order to secure the recovery of maintenance for the child from the parents or other persons having financial responsibility for the child.
South Africa has signed and ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child and one would, therefore, expect our government to apply due diligence in the implementation of this convention as it relates to the maintenance of the child, as well as our own legislation on maintenance.
On the issue of maintenance, there are, however, severe implementation problems with regard to our existing legislation. There are too few maintenance prosecutors, and those who are there are not sufficiently legally qualified. Our courts are not operating in a uniform manner, some courts do not execute maintenance orders via the civil route, court orders are made without verifying the expenses of the respondents and expenses are inflated to increase the maintenance of the child. It is time for our government to become tough on maintenance defaulters. Let us all then protect the rights of children by ensuring that our law becomes more effective. I thank you. [Applause.]
Mrs S M CAMERER: Madam Chairperson, as my colleague the hon Janet Semple has pointed out, the vexed question of maintenance and our overburdened, creaking maintenance courts continues to be a source of victimisation and frustration for so many women in our country who have the misfortune to have to approach the courts to get maintenance out of the fathers of their children.
In spite of the reformed legislation passed eight years ago under the auspices of the late Minister Dullah Omar, and the department’s commitment to appoint more maintenance investigators countrywide, they are regarded as the key to the success of this legislation. The first were only appointed three years ago. Unbelievably, the sections of the Maintenance Act providing for their appointment have still not been put into operation officially - eight years later, although I’m assured this will happen shortly.
In spite of yet another campaign by the Justice department to jack up the maintenance system, called Operation Isondlo, which means “maintenance” in isiZulu, launched with much fanfare just before the municipal elections, the situation in our maintenance system is still abysmal. An audit recently conducted by the Justice department itself of the top 25 courts in the country reveals enormous backlogs and that the officials are totally overburdened. The Justice department concedes that 188 officials in these 25 courts handle an average of 390 files each.
This is an impossible burden. For example: the maintenance court in Johannesburg is currently burdened with nearly 84 000 files. The courts in Philippi and Mitchells Plain in the Western Cape together carry some 80 000 files. Durban, Pretoria and Bloemfontein each carry in the region of 20 000 files. Thousands of outstanding warrants of arrests have also been identified. In fact, the situation in the Johannesburg Maintenance Court, which is the single biggest, busiest court in our country, has to be seen to be believed. Hundreds of women queue there daily, waiting for their cases to be heard, and very often they go home disappointed.
It is true that with Operation Isondlo the Justice department is making a renewed effort to improve the capacity of the maintenance courts. During the Budget Vote in June this year, we were informed that 86 new maintenance officer posts have been created, a total of 140 assistants to maintenance officers have been appointed and a further 100 intern posts have been advertised to help with Operation Isondlo. There has been an additional budgetary allocation for this purpose. In a pilot project, maintenance defaulters have been arrested during the Sixteen Days of Activism in November. The team of 145 maintenance investigators is attempting to get more facts about maintenance dodgers from Sars and the Deeds Office through searches. The jury is still out as to whether these measures will make any significant impact on a system that is so utterly decrepit. The reformed Maintenance Act is not yet working for women.
Possibly, the legal framework itself needs a radical overhaul so that a proposal previously suggested by academic researchers should be considered, namely that the onus should not be on the maintenance applicant to go to court to get maintenance. Maintenance applications should be dealt with administratively and payments determined by the Department of Social Development. The onus of going to court should shift to the maintenance payer, should he – and it is invariably a he – wish to contest a maintenance award or determination by the department.
In conclusion, new thinking and new action is necessary if our maintenance system is to be effective for the women of our county. I thank you. [Applause.] Mrs H I BOGOPANE-ZULU: House Chair, the topic we are discussing today is one of those very sad topics for this House to deliberate upon. What makes it so sad is that it involves innocent children who never asked to be brought into this world, did not have a choice about whom their parents should be and were not consulted on the matter.
Standing here today to talk about nonpayment of maintenance orders, being one of those women who have lived through the experience of nonpayment, makes me relive those days when I so desperately needed the money to support my daughter - to no avail. I look at my participation in this debate as a mandate from those children who are born to fathers and mothers who do not want to pay their maintenance money.
Standing here today I hear their cry, their silent voices making a simple request: “Please feed me, please clothe me, provide me with a home, educate me, love me and care for me, and show interest in my wellbeing.” For a number of these children this is still a dream, and for some one that will never come true. And the question I wish to pose to the hon members today is: Why?
As a nation we recognise, through our Constitution and the Bill of Rights, that children are an important element of society. Hence we ensured that, unlike other rights, their rights are not progressive.
As we have heard from the previous speakers, we drafted the best Maintenance Act, passed by this House in 1998, with a lot of new innovations to change the lives of mostly poor women and children in their attempt to access maintenance. Six years later, this debate affords us an opportunity to take stock of how far we have come in this regard.
This evaluation coincides with one of the most important events, and that is the 50th anniversary of the women’s march. And as a young woman, today I can imagine that those women did not only want a better South Africa where they would not have to carry passes, but one where there is a broad improvement in the quality of their lives and those of their families, including children.
What has been done to date? We have launched, as we have already heard, Operation Isondlo, developed guidelines for the magistrates on the implementation of the Maintenance Act and employed 427 maintenance clerks and 140 maintenance investigators. The list goes on - as the hon Dudley has just indicated.
The Children’s Act has just been passed and is in the process of being concluded, in the hope that it will go a long way towards furthering the protection of children. We have established the Office on the Rights of the Child in the Presidency, and part of what it is supposed to do is improve the quality of lives, including providing maintenance for children. We have also launched the national plan of action for children. I am standing here having participated in that launch, but I’m still concerned about its implementation, and whether it is indeed assisting us. The challenge is that as Members of Parliament, I think, we must begin to take responsibility for holding accountable those responsible for implementing the national plan of action, because it will go a long way towards assisting us.
Having done all of the above and everything else that has been indicated by all the hon members, we are still faced with problems, such as, firstly, that maintenance orders are still not paid; secondly, there is also lack of compliance, and thirdly, inadequately skilled maintenance clerks sometimes deal with elderly women as if they are dealing with children, giving them the kind of treatment they would not even give their own mothers.
I think we all know what happens in maintenance courts, and what results we are faced with. Women rather opt to go for the child support grant of R190 instead of really chasing after very rich, successful fathers who don’t want to pay maintenance. And I think that this is one of the things that we really need to look at.
It is clear to us that legislation alone is not enough. We will need creative methods to ensure that we get maintenance for those who need it, that is our children, and most of them are very poor. And we further make a commitment to them that we will put them first. Chairperson, we are faced with the challenges of HIV and Aids, which for me are closely linked to the struggles of maintenance, the empowerment of the girl child, crime prevention, and many other social pressures, among them the high level of unemployment. And even though we want to agree that there is a high level of nonpayment, the reality is that a lot of fathers cannot afford to maintain their children owing to a lack of jobs.
Societal pressures that we face in our quest to create a better South Africa include the fact that history will judge us on how best we have managed to protect those who cannot protect themselves, and those are children.
Together we can contribute towards finding solutions to this problem through ensuring that the SA Social Security Agency does not only concentrate on issues of grants, but also ensures that its systems identify those fathers who can afford maintenance. Secondly, the agency should ease the burden on the mothers of children requiring support by making sure that the money that has been allocated to it is actually allocated to those children who deserve it, and whose fathers, for one reason or another, cannot afford to pay.
We need to develop community programmes in terms of which communities hold fathers accountable. If you know, as we used to do, that so and so has a child next door, take the responsibility of assisting that poor young woman and unemployed mother to get maintenance before the parents drag each other off to court over a child, irrespective of how that child was conceived.
We also need effective gender programmes that concentrate on the empowerment of men. I believe that successful implementation of gender programmes would assist in elevating the rights of children, and hold especially our male counterparts responsible and make them very proud fathers.
In the Children’s Act we have actually improved the rights of single fathers because one of the problems is that men who father children out of wedlock were previously denied the right to be fathers to their children, who were called illegitimate children or had to endure all the different labels that children born out of wedlock were given.
We hope that as the Act gets rolled out more fathers will be educated on their rights and that they will be empowered to love, care for, respect and treat their children that they bring into this world with dignity. This also goes for all the mothers who happen to be employed when the fathers are not.
The purpose is not to demonise both men and women, but rather to facilitate the growth of a strong and responsible society, on its path to healing from a cruel past, that puts its children first. The struggle for children’s rights is a long one and it is a sad one, because children cannot stand here and fight for themselves. It rests upon all of us in this House to ensure that there is compliance with the Maintenance Act, and that the required nonpromulgated section of the Act is promulgated.
Together as parents, community leaders and public representatives we should begin to hold to account those who are supposed to maintain their children so that they take the responsibility for easing the social security system and for educating, feeding and loving their children. Thank you. [Applause.]
The DEPUTY MINISTER FOR JUSTICE AND CONSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT: Madam Chairperson, hon Deputy Ministers, hon members, comrades and friends, may I first thank all members for their contributions and I assure you that we will seriously look at all of them and see if we can do anything about it to change the system. I would also encourage everyone that when you find the system not working in your constituencies to send us details of what the problems are and why it’s not working and I assure you that we shall do all we can to try and make it work better.
It was Mahatma Gandhi who once remarked that, ``if we wish to create a lasting peace, we must begin with the children’’. Unfortunately, with regard to child support and maintenance, the interests of the children often seem to be at the bottom of the priority list of adults whose legal duty is to maintain them. The process of claiming maintenance is often wrought with unnecessary conflict, pain, frustration and a sense of helplessness that impacts negatively on the intended beneficiaries, especially children.
Maintenance and child support, if approached and administered correctly and in the interests of especially children, has the potential to release significant numbers of women and children from the trap of poverty.
The good news is that our first democratic government, especially the Department of Justice, attaches enormous importance to the vital role the maintenance system plays in the support of especially vulnerable children and the alleviation of poverty. It was with this in mind that government promoted the maintenance amendments of 1998. The Act, in the words of the late Dullah Omar:
… focuses on improving the plight of vulnerable groups in our society, vulnerability which stretches across racial, ethnic, cultural or social divides, vulnerability which emanates not only from past governmental policies but also from traditional views across the spectrum of our society which are often contrary to the values we are trying to promote and protect, the values which underlie our Constitution.
The Act introduced a core set of principles relating to the duty of parents who support their children. It also contains provisions that can effectively address maintenance issues if all role players such as respondents, employers, judicial officers, maintenance officers, clerks, investigators, sheriffs and police officers play their part.
In a decisive break with the past, the Maintenance Act makes provision for a number of innovative civil provisions to facilitate the effective and efficient resolution of cases. These measures include the introduction of maintenance investigators, the introduction of a form of garnishee order whereby an employer has to deduct from the employee’s salary and also the granting of maintenance orders by default attachments of emoluments and attachment in the warrants of executions against property.
All these innovations introduced in 1998 revolutionised the archaic apartheid maintenance system. Since then, we have made some strides in improving the system. However, it is true that despite the existence of the Act and the innovative amendments and other improvements that have been introduced, we are still experiencing some difficulties relating to implementation. Some of the problems that continue to plague our maintenance system include an antiquated manual payment system, insufficient facilities and, in some instances, the staff component that lacks the necessary skills and capacity. Potential resource constraints also need constant monitoring.
You would be aware that the frailties inherent in the maintenance system were put under the microscope in the constitutional case of Burman. In this case, Judge Mokgoro made reference to the fact that court orders are habitually evaded and defied with relative impunity. To deal with some of these problems, we have embarked on further innovative improvements. A process of replacing the manual system is currently under way by the department – firstly, by encouraging beneficiaries to open bank accounts so that the courts can direct respondents to pay maintenance monies directly into the beneficiary’s bank account. This will have an enormous impact, as maintenance beneficiaries who opt for the bank account system will avoid long queues at courts at month-end. Payment through the court will remain available for beneficiaries who opt to collect the benefits at the court. There are also initiatives to extend the maintenance payments beyond the official hours - even on Saturdays - to alleviate the maintenance payment backlogs.
Secondly, the department has also developed the Justice Deposit Account System. This is the electronic system used to manage all cases in the courts that involve the payment of money into court as bail, maintenance and fines. How does this work? Well, if someone comes to court a case will be opened on the electronic system instead of the traditional manual card being drawn up. The particulars of the person are kept on the system and all payments or withdrawals are then reflected electronically. At present a person may only deposit or withdraw the monies where the card is physically kept. With these electronic systems monies can now be deposited or withdrawn from any court in which the system has been installed. It is presently linked to 23 of our major courts. This system has been piloted in these courts, and we are now satisfied that it is sustainable and can be extended to the rest of the courts. This process of rolling out has already commenced and will be completed in the next couple of months. The benefit of the system, as you will see, is that it removes the manual system completely and replaces it with an IT system which is much more efficient.
The other obvious benefit is that we can deal with fraud more effectively. With the system every action on each case is recorded and a report can be produced accordingly. The system is also a management tool to check the efficiency of the officials themselves.
It is against this background of nonpayment and noncompliance with maintenance orders that Minister Mabandla launched the Operation Isondlo Project in December 2005. The project is aimed at facilitating a proper and effective maintenance system that responds to the needs of our children, especially the needy and vulnerable. Some of the initiatives under the project included targeting maintenance defaulters through road blocks in a number of areas conducted with our cluster partners. Since the launch of the project we have substantially increased the finalisation of maintenance enquiries, section 31 cases and the attachment of emolument orders. I have a whole lot of statistics and if anyone is interested you can get them from the department.
One of the successful initiatives of the project was to trace beneficiaries and hand over unclaimed maintenance monies to ensure that we successfully trace and pay all the beneficiaries. The department has enlisted the help of community-based organisations – NGOs, schools, traditional leaders, municipalities and religious groupings.
We have also, through this project, improved the capacity substantially around maintenance matters. We have had a full review of the number of maintenance cases being handled and the number of staff dealing with that and we have already created an additional 427 maintenance clerk posts. Various maintenance investigator posts have also been filled, as Mrs Camerer has mentioned. These numbers will escalate as our capacity increases and more resources become available.
The department also took into consideration complaints about the lack of uniformity in the maintenance orders given by courts in cases where the facts were the same. Consequently, we have facilitated the development by magistrates of guidelines for the implementation of the maintenance system. Since the launch of the project and the appointment of investigators and additional maintenance clerks, especially at a number of courts that were identified as hotspots in the nine provinces, it is becoming clear that we are more effectively dealing with the backlogs and alleviating problems experienced by women and children in accessing maintenance. In the process, we have also been developing various best practices which we can roll out to other courts. Of course, we now need to improve this, and we need to do it even better than we are doing it at the moment.
Since the introduction of Operation Isondlo, there has been an estimated 65% improvement in the reduction of circle times in the hearing of maintenance matters. Again, the statistics are available. Operation Isondlo’s key result area of improvement of the maintenance system has the enforcement of the provisions of the Act as one of the strategic objectives, as this will ensure the increased effectiveness of the maintenance system. To achieve this strategic objective, the training of clerks and other court personnel on how to practically apply these remedies is crucial. In this regard, the persons in the Justice College will know the steps we are taking in the Justice College to provide specific training for these types of matters. In order to deal with this situation, Operation Isondlo has capacity-building as one of its foundational pillars.
We have also embarked on an internship programme whereby 100 unemployed graduates are employed to assist in designated courts with the implementation of Operation Isondlo. In conclusion, we readily acknowledge that the court system is saddled with some institutional problems, including poor management, antiquated systems and the staffing deficiencies. But we are dealing with these challenges in a structured and organised fashion. That is why I think we need to be very careful not to generalise about these things. It is much more preferable that if anyone has problems with the system they are really serious about fixing up the problems. I have never received something like that from Mrs Camerer in all the time that I have been there or in the committee chair. So, if you have problems with the system, send the information to us and we will deal with it. That is a much better way to deal with it. It doesn’t help to trash the whole system because there are thousands of staff members who go to work every day and try their best under very difficult circumstances to do their work. So, to trash the whole system and say everything is bad is wrong. Where there are problems and where there are officials who don’t do their work, please give us their names and the circumstances under which that occurred and we assure you that we will deal with those matters.
It is critical that we emphasise that government cannot and should not be expected to address the issue of maintenance on its own. Communities also need to be active participants in ensuring that maintenance defaulters are exposed for denying children their rights. In the words of the late former Minister Omar: ``We cannot change the mindsets and attitudes of people through legislation alone, particularly when it comes to addressing social issues. We dare not fool ourselves into thinking that we can legislate people’s conduct in every respect.’’
To change people’s mindsets about child support and maintenance and to ensure that respondents pay and comply with court orders and pay maintenance, we need all role players such as employers, maintenance investigators, clerks, judicial officers and communities to play their parts.
In conclusion, let me make a comparison. I think it would be quite true to say that the maintenance system under apartheid was one in which not much attention was paid to poor people and they could have cared less. If one compared it to a car, it was a “skedonk” [rust bucket]. I think what has happened over the past few years is that we have graduated the system up to a Toyota. Toyota is not a bad car. I understand that the vast majority of people in this country drive Toyotas. So it can’t be a bad car. But there are very few of us who would want to drive from here to Johannesburg in a Toyota. So, our maintenance system is at best at a Toyota’s level. I know particularly the hon Dene Smuts would not want to drive all that way in a Toyota.
Maar jy sal nooit daarmee Johannesburg toe ry nie. [But you would never drive to Johannesburg in that.]
So, I think the point that I am trying to make is that we now have graduated our maintenance system to at least a luxury sedan at the bottom of the range, and we can then move up to other models. To do that, we need everyone’s assistance. We need both the majority party and the opposition to monitor these issues and to deal with them. But the one thing we must be careful of is the issue that people have raised about defaulters. Defaulters are in the hands of the courts. In terms of the separation of powers, of course, we need to be very careful in what we say about those things because the courts need to deal with that. What we need to do is have debates like this and try and imprint it on the consciousness of the nation and those who deal with maintenance that the issue of default is serious and it should be taken seriously and be dealt with innovatively.
I remember a very interesting case in which a magistrate – I think it was in Wynberg – actually used to give maintenance defaulters a sentence when they appeared before him. But he used to suspend it to a certain date and say that if they didn’t pay the money by that date they would go to prison. In fact, that case was taken to higher courts on appeal to claim that the magistrate did not have the power to do that. I remember the higher courts still upheld that. But that’s the kind of innovation we need to try and get people to pay their monies.
So there are two issues really. One is defaulters, who are really the preserve of the judiciary. And we need to see how we deal with that. And, of course, then there is the system where it works, and that is our department’s responsibility. And if you have any issues to raise in that regard I would welcome it.
So, once again thank you for everyone’s participation in the debate, and we have taken notes and we will very seriously deal with all the issues that have been raised. Thank you very much, Madam Chairperson. [Applause.]
Ms J A SEMPLE: Chairperson, I would like to thank the Deputy Minister for his answers to some of the questions raised in this debate. I know that there are two ladies in the gallery today who will be sending their stories to him – stories that reflect the problems of thousands of women across the country who have had to deal with the courts on numerous occasions with little success.
The nonpayment of maintenance is a form of abuse in terms of the Domestic Violence Act. However, there are times when we try to use this avenue and have maintenance investigators tell complainants that that is not their approach to take. The Deputy Minister has acknowledged that perhaps some of those people are not as well trained as they should be. The problem is that even when courts rule on punitive measures against defaulters there is no follow-through and defaulters once again ignore the judgment and still nothing is done to them.
Eight years after the legislation was passed, it is unacceptable that it is still up to the applicant to prove the need for maintenance, provide the whereabouts of the defaulter and then be made to feel guilty for querying the nonpayment of maintenance. It has been said that the Maintenance Act is full of bark but very little bite. Perhaps we should revisit the way in which the Maintenance Act is handled. It is not working. It is time to say enough is enough.
Nevertheless, Deputy Minister, we appreciate your commitment to the children of South Africa and we look forward to a Rolls Royce system in the future.
Debate concluded.
CONSIDERATION OF REPORT OF PORTFOLIO COMMITTEE ON WATER AFFAIRS AND FORESTRY – oversight of 2004-05 annual reports and oral presentations of
water boards
Ms C C SEPTEMBER: Thank you very much, Chairperson. Good afternoon to everyone in the House. How are you? [Laughter.]
The reports that we are asking you to consider this afternoon really come at a very opportune time, as we are about to deal with the annual reports in Parliament. This report deals with the strategic plan for the department that the portfolio committee had to consider and, equally so, the water boards appearing before us earlier in the year as well as the report thereafter.
In so far as the water boards are concerned, for us what has been very significant in considering this report is the fact that although water boards need to report to the Minister directly, as far as the finances are concerned they appeared before the committee to do so.
Water boards in South Africa are one of those entities that is quite important. Mainly they provide water in bulk in many areas. The primary activity of a water board, therefore, is to provide water services mainly, as I said, in bulk. They also provide potable water as well as water service institutions directly in the areas where they are situated.
For us, what has been very important as the committee in having them appear before us was to really gauge how water boards deal with their own finances. Some of the observations that we made were that whilst we wanted to see how they are accounting in terms of their finances, we also wanted to see how the water boards align their own programmes with government’s objectives.
So, it was quite an interesting presentation that we received and we have observed as a committee from the annual reports that the water boards, not in all instances, have aligned their own activities with the President’s state of the nation addresses from 2004 up to today.
When we are to consider reports of the water boards some of the areas that we feel need recommendations relate to how water boards can align their annual reports and their business plans to the strategic objectives of government, and how they do that within the five-year term.
Water boards also play quite an important role with municipalities and therefore their five-year plans must be more or less, if not exactly the same as both the state of the nation address of the President and the programmes of the municipalities.
We felt that the committee needs to discuss with the department as to how and what mechanisms need to be put in place, and what mechanisms can be accomplished. And we also felt that, with regard to water boards that were unable to appear before us and have had quite a number of difficulties in operating, the department must timeously intervene in those instances to make sure that those water boards operate in a particular and desirable manner.
Our view was that perhaps the department should also come before the committee and report in detail on the financial viability of a lot of these water boards because in some instances they did report in the public hearings that, financially speaking, some of them are not operating very well.
Water boards should also come to the committee to report on their own institutional reform and in addition the Minister should report to the committee on what steps they are taking to make sure that these boards function in the manner that the National Water Act determines they should.
So, as far as the water boards are concerned, we were able to look at all annual reports, but also to look at how the departments are doing oversight on the financial activities of the water boards. The recommendations that we made are in the report that we are asking the House to consider today. At the same time we have been able to look at the strategic plan of the department for this year. As I said, we are about to look - in a couple of weeks’ time - at how the department has been able to function with regard to what they told us earlier on in the year in their strategic plan and the budget.
In this instance we were able to observe that the department has taken into consideration the recommendations that the committee made so as to align their strategic plan in such a way that it also speaks to the budget. The linkage and the framework that the department put together between all the different programmes reflect the different government priorities that need to be there. The many key focus areas that they have in their strategic plan must be very realistic to allow for a system of implementation as well as outputs that are quite important in this instance – outputs that are projected well and would take us until 2011.
There were quite a number of areas that we asked need to be considered, such as how - when the department comes to us with its annual report - summaries should be given of allocations by their functional areas and by all the economic classifications in the strategic plan, as well as how that will collate with spending from 2005–09.
In providing the budgets the report should give us some indicators, targets, and milestones from the strategic plan. We felt that that would assist the committee in getting an overview of the different key focus areas that the department has set and indeed this has happened already.
As far as the Auditor-General’s report is concerned, the department was chosen to be a pilot site to implement the Generally Accepted Accounting Practice. Of course, we will have a look at that again when we deal with the annual report.
We think that some of the key interventions flowing out of the strategic plan for the department need to be in relation to how the department split the accounts that they have. In fact, what needs to happen is that they split the accrual and the cash-based activities into two distinct functions and it’s a view that Treasury has probably also told them of.
They have appointed people and have put together some restructuring initiatives to assist them in their financial activities and / or the steering committee that they have to establish to oversee the financial year audit, and currently the audit process is progressing according to the plan.
However, the main area of concern for us remains the management of assets and a number of areas they pointed out to us were in relation to the IT solutions that they had to put together as well as all the areas that both the Auditor-General and the National Treasury have put to them.
So, Madam Chairperson, there were quite a number of areas that we pointed out and there are quite a number of recommendations that we have made in the strategic plan to the water boards. We hope that you are not only adopting the report today but will also lead us on how we can then deal with the annual report when it comes before us. I thank you for your attention, hon members.
There was no debate.
The DEPUTY CHIEF WHIP OF THE MAJORITY PARTY: Chairperson, I move that the report be adopted. Motion agreed to.
Report accordingly adopted.
CONSIDERATION OF REPORT OF PORTFOLIO COMMITTEE ON CORRECTIONAL SERVICES - VISIT TO PRISONS IN THE LIMPOPO PROVINCE
CONSIDERATION OF REPORT OF PORTFOLIO COMMITTEE ON CORRECTIONAL SERVICES - ANNUAL REPORT AND FINANCIAL STATEMENTS OF THE DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONAL SERVICES FOR 2004-05
Mr D V BLOEM: Chairperson, it’s once again an honour for me to present these two reports before the House on behalf of the committee. Thank you very much.
There was no debate.
The DEPUTY CHIEF WHIP OF THE MAJORITY PARTY: Chairperson, I move:
That –
a) the Report on Visit to Prisons in the Limpopo Province be adopted;
and
b) the Report on Annual Report and Financial Statements of the
Department of Correctional Services for 2004-05 be adopted, with the
following amendment:
That in paragraph D 3(a) of the Report, the recommendation that the
Department of Correctional Services involves members of the
Committee in its imbizos, be deleted.
Motion agreed to.
Report on Visit to Prisons in the Limpopo Province accordingly adopted.
Report on Annual Report and Financial Statements of the Department of Correctional Services for 2004-05, as amended, accordingly adopted.
CONSIDERATION OF REPORT OF PORTFOLIO COMMITTEE ON CORRECTIONAL SERVICES – VISIT TO PRISONS IN THE EASTERN CAPE PROVINCE
Mr N B FIHLA: Madam Chairperson, the debate on the report of the committee’s visit to the Eastern Cape correctional centres in East London, King William’s Town, Middledrift and St Albans must be viewed within the context of the need to constructively engage the Department of Correctional Services to improve the conditions within the correctional centres. The debate, therefore, should not be exploited to negatively portray the department as inefficient and ineffective, in an attempt to score cheap political points.
The oversight visit to the Eastern Cape was indeed an eye-opener which exposed us to the realities of conditions within correctional centres, including issues related to overcrowding, the large number of incarcerated juveniles, and institutional and labour challenges related to complaints about salary disparities, promotions, a shortage of resources, etc.
What became prominent, however, is the fact that many of the challenges overarched and were endemic throughout many of the correctional centres visited. The issue of overcrowding, for instance, was more evident in the King William’s Town correctional centre, which was overcrowded by over 200% – the highest in the region.
The Middledrift maximum security facility was rather confronted with acute staff and management animosity that had spiralled into a lack of discipline and respect for authority, low staff morale and a general breakdown of trust between junior staff and management.
Whilst there could be some differences here and there in terms of challenges experienced in each correctional centre, generally the issues raised and challenges experienced were more or less common throughout.
The appalling physical state of the Middledrift prison, which faces crumbling infrastructure as a result of overpopulation, needs serious attention from the department before the situation becomes explosive. The labour dynamics prevailing in the prison that have almost rendered it a time bomb waiting to explode have to be attended to as a matter of urgency, in spite of the successes achieved by the intervention mechanisms initiated by the regional commissioner, such as the task team that was established to normalise the almost volatile situation.
The fact that the prison continues to operate as a maximum security facility in spite of the human settlement around it, which poses a security threat and compromises it, should not be tolerated. There is a need for a revolutionary intervention strategy to turn the situation around at the Middledrift prison. I would strongly support the pronouncement made by the Minister and commissioner to close the centre temporarily whilst a clean-up operation is under way.
Hopefully, if implemented, this strategy would culminate in the redeployment and transfer of staff and dangerous offenders to other centres, and the introduction of new management and staff as well as the ultimate downgrading of the prison into a medium-security prison mostly holding medium-risk offenders and juveniles. I must express my dismay at the fact that whilst we were on the oversight visit the hon member Mr Selfe from the DA excused himself from the committee concerning the visit to St Albans, saying that he would be attending to urgent political matters in KwaZulu-Natal.
Hon Selfe went to see a prisoner in St Albans and he is going to allude to that. The conduct of hon Selfe exceeded all bounds of political maturity. It was undignified and unbecoming of a member of the House. Had he intended to conduct bona fide parliamentary oversight, he would have made use of our visit to address whatever was so special about the offender he went to see.
I refuse to give special attention to a particular prisoner and I view such action as stooping to low levels of ranting and raving that are disruptive and do not do justice to the hard work and fairness that this committee has established in carrying out its oversight responsibility concerning the department.
In fact, the inmate has, on several occasions, made several uncorroborated allegations to all and sundry. He has been transferred over 30 times from various prisons and he has tried to escape many more times than any other prisoner we know of. I may as well add that the inmate in question has been known to be manipulative, deceptive and very abusive and his transfer was therefore long overdue.
What became evident and more profound during the visit was the seeming lack of a strong internal communication element within the correctional centres. This stemmed from the fact that many of the complaints conveyed to us by staff, such as issues of overtime, salary disparities between Correctional Services and other departments within the security clusters, namely Defence and the SAPS, as well as the phasing out of overtime allowance, to mention a few, are policy issues that we expect staff to be well versed in and informed of.
Whether or not these policy decisions were communicated to staff comprehensively and effectively is neither here nor there …
The HOUSE CHAIRPERSON (Ms C-S Botha): Hon member, your time has expired.
Mr N B FIHLA: I thank you. [Applause.]
Mr J SELFE: Madam Chair, I would have liked to address many of the challenges faced by the department in the Eastern Cape, but I have very limited time. I also don’t really have time to deal with the fatuous observations of the hon member Mr Fihla, save to say that he, like me, has a card such as this, which allows us at any time, anywhere, in any correctional facility to interview any inmate, and I hold by that right, whether it is to the liking of Mr Fihla or not. [Interjections.] I am therefore going to confine myself to Middledrift, because, better than any other prison, it epitomises the problems faced by the Department of Correctional Services. The facility is supposed to accommodate 411 inmates, but houses 1 550. As one of the three maximum security prisons in the Eastern Cape, there are more people serving very long sentences. One inmate there is serving 82 years, another seven life sentences.
One cell we visited was designed for 52 inmates, but houses 76. The beds were stacked in at least double, but mainly triple bunks. The ceiling was black with dirt. The atmosphere was stifling and the smell of human bodies was overpowering. The cell has one shower, one toilet and one broken sink. This is warehousing at its worst.
No meaningful rehabilitation can occur and under these conditions the devil finds work for idle hands. Thus we were told of drugs, alcohol, food and even weapons being smuggled in by warders; of inmates running banking accounts and playing the Lotto, and in one disgraceful case, of an inmate having sex with a warder.
To say that the staff who run this prison are demotivated would be an understatement. There are posts that have been approved and even financed, but are yet not filled. Scores of staff are serving in acting capacities, that is they do the job, but they don’t get paid for it. There are shortages of key staff such as managers, medical specialists and educationalists. Professionals leave the service in substantial numbers.
This cripples many of the programmes the staff would like to run. A R19 million piggery and chicken-producing project cannot operate for want of qualified staff. The facility, as the member Fihla mentioned, is relatively old and was not built well in the first place. Basic infrastructure, such as the lack of an internal telephone system, hampers efficiency and the safety of staff.
The management complains that some staff members conspire, often with inmates, against them. I saw an affidavit from a Popcru member alleging that he’d been instructed to provoke an altercation with a senior manager and then shoot him. Management say that some of the escapes were orchestrated to show them up in a bad light.
A departmental investigation has recommended a series of steps to rectify the situation, including the transfer of troublesome inmates to other centres, the injection of money to fill critical posts and the transfer of staff. One hopes that this will lead to an improvement, but this is the fifth such report on this institution, and none of the previous recommendations have been acted upon.
Against this sombre background, what should be done? Firstly, the DCS at all levels needs to improve its communication. Staff at Middledrift were ignorant of even the most basic management decisions and procedures. Under these circumstances it’s easy for mischievous people to distort the truth and fan discontent.
Secondly, the staff structure needs to be financed and finalised so that people know what their jobs are and get remunerated accordingly. This ought to improve the management capacity and the ability of the DCS to guarantee proper supervision and discipline of inmates.
And the inmates themselves? Well, they need to understand that they’re paying a debt to society. A prison sentence needs to be a deterrent, and of necessity life inside there must be disciplined and may be unpleasant. At the same time inmates must emerge from Middledrift less, not more criminalised. Thank you, Chair. [Time expired.]
Mrs I MARS: Chairperson, I’ll be reading this speech on behalf of the hon Ndlovu.
Owing to constraints I will focus on the committee’s reports on recommendations in respect of Middledrift Correctional Centre. Middledrift was built to accommodate 411 inmates, yet it currently holds 1 550 inmates. This is an overpopulation figure of almost 400%. The committee’s visit clearly showed that there’s a crisis at Middledrift.
Some of the observations included escapes and warders’ abetting thereof, the smuggling of illegal substances and firearms, and unruly and disrespectful warders. In a shocking indictment of the lack of professionalism by DCS staff the report states:
The committee also established that female staff members at the centre had intimate relationships with inmates incarcerated there and even had children by inmates. Other problems included inmates with mobile phones and bank cards, and even one inmate with an architectural plan of the prison. In addition, the management at Middledrift informed the committee that they do not receive any support from the regional or the national DCS offices.
The IFP finds the situation at Middledrift totally unacceptable, inexcusable and completely intolerable. The committee recommends that the DCS should report back to it in one month on steps it has taken to rectify the situation. The IFP feels this recommendation should be stronger. We believe the DCS should table a practical plan before the committee on how it intends to solve the problems at Middledrift within three months.
This must include better co-ordination and support for the prison management and in addition the DCS must inform Parliament immediately which high-ranking national DCS official will be driving the turnabout plan at Middledrift. [Time expired.]
Mr S N SWART: Chairperson, the report highlights the need for such oversight visits, and that relating to Middledrift comes as a shock. As was pointed out, the committee was informed that many of the members are unruly and disrespectful towards management, and often escapes are assisted by members to prove that managers don’t or can’t manage the centre.
This is a totally unacceptable and disgraceful state of affairs. The committee also found that the department is not in control of its centres, and many of the centres visited, especially the Middledrift centre, are “on the verge of collapse”.
Whilst the ACDP commends those hard-working and honest members for their commitment under very difficult conditions, clearly, much must be done. The head office, regional offices and area management levels must ensure that this prison is brought into line. The ACDP supports the recommendation of a temporary closure of this prison for a clean-up operation. I thank you.
Ms S RAJBALLY: Chairperson, our growing prison population is a serious reality of the crime rate in South Africa and the seriousness of our justice system in removing criminals from society.
However, it is extremely discouraging when we look at the prison population and realise how many are juvenile delinquents. That makes us ask: Where are we failing? The state of prisons in the Eastern Cape does not appear much different from the bleak reality of prisons throughout the country. Overcrowded prison populations, staff shortages, minimal resources and poor facilities are the realities.
The MF takes its hat off to the Correctional Services officials who manage to work under these terrible circumstances and co-ordinate the security of these facilities. If we are to assist in stamping out crime we need to ensure proper correctional facilities and security to contain prisoners and prison life.
The MF appeals to the court to speed up all hearings and release our juveniles, especially, under special supervision. This would also cut the cost for the state. The issue of HIV and Aids-infected prisoners needs to receive greater attention, as does the dispensing of antiretrovirals in prisons. We thank the committee for this report, especially the chairperson, hon Bloem, that makes a serious call for action and immediate redress at all correctional facilities. I thank you.
Mr D V BLOEM: Chairperson, it’s once again an honour for me to present this report of the Eastern Cape to the House.
The committee visited the Eastern Cape from 1 to 4 August 2006. I want to start by saying that it is very important that we ask the question: What is the purpose of imprisonment? I believe that imprisonment has a purpose. It must serve as a deterrent against crime. It must deter and scare people. It must also protect the community, but if we raise the question of rehabilitation, then we enter far more difficult terrain.
Let me explain why I say the issue of rehabilitation is difficult terrain. I don’t think it will be possible for the department to implement effective rehabilitation programmes when we have prisons as overcrowded as those in the Eastern Cape. To cite an example, Middledrift Prison was built to house 411 prisoners but at present there are 1 550 inmates - and this is triple the number. How is it possible to rehabilitate prisoners? To make things even worse, there is a shortage of social workers, psychologists, doctors, nurses and teachers.
We need to do something as a matter of urgency. I know for a fact that there are people sitting in prison who are not supposed to be there. I have said it many a time from this podium, and I think the time has come to act. There are people who are not necessarily criminals, people who can’t pay a fine of R100 or R1 000.
I want to address myself to the Minister of Correctional Services here. There are provisions in the Act, in section 81, subsection (1) and I quote:
If the Minister is satisfied that the prison population is reaching such proportions that the safety, human dignity and physical care of the prisoner are being affected materially, the matter must be referred to the national council.
Subsection (2) says that the national council may recommend the advancement of the approved date for placement of any prisoner or group of prisoners under community corrections, and the Minister may act accordingly.
After visiting these prisons, I am of the opinion that our prisons have reached such proportions as to affect the safety, human dignity and physical care of prisoners. Therefore, I will call upon the Minister to approach the national council to release prisoners who are not supposed to be there.
I will cite an example of what I mean by saying that some people who are sitting there are not supposed to be there. We found a young woman with a baby and a child of two years in one of the prisons in the Eastern Cape. She was pregnant when she was arrested for stealing a pair of baby shoes worth R99. She was sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment. It costs the state R123 per day to keep this woman in prison and even more because the state must also look after the newborn baby and the two-year-old child. I am citing an example of one incident. How many more are facing the same situation?
I have said that prison is there for rehabilitation and that is the policy of the Department of Correctional Services. I don’t think it is possible for us to rehabilitate people.
Let me use another example, something which is a very hot topic at present, and that is that of Mr Tony Yengeni. He was found guilty in a court of law and that I respect, and I will never criticise the judgment of our courts. The court sentenced him to four years’ imprisonment but also said that he will be eligible to be placed on parole after serving eight months of his sentence. Can we really say that we are implementing the policy of Correctional Services, which is to rehabilitate each and every inmate? I think that we must move away from the point of view that we must punish people instead of rehabilitating them.
Keeping people such as Tony Yengeni in prison runs directly counter to the White Paper on Correctional Services. That is why I am calling on the Minister to consider and release prisoners who are not a threat to society and who already have dates for release.
I will always talk about the overcrowding situation in our prisons, because this committee visits these prisons, and we know the situations in our prisons. I really hope that the Minister will consider this call and release these people who are not supposed to be in our prisons, because R123 per day is being spent on each and every inmate that is sitting there. It is not necessary for them to sit there. Thank you very much. [Applause.]
The DEPUTY CHIEF WHIP OF THE MAJORITY PARTY: Chairperson, we move that the report on the annual report and financial statements of the Department of Correctional Services for 2004-05 be adopted with the following amendment:
That in paragraph D 3(a) of the Report, the recommendation that the Department of Correctional Services involves members of the committee in its imbizos be deleted.
The HOUSE CHAIRPERSON (Ms C-S Botha): Can I hear if the amendment is accepted? Thank you, then the motion as amended is adopted.
Hon Deputy Chief Whip, I have just been informed that the amendment …
The DEPUTY CHIEF WHIP OF THE MAJORITY PARTY: You want the amendment to the Eastern Cape report?
The HOUSE CHAIRPERSON (Ms C-S Botha): I don’t know if there is an amendment to the Eastern Cape report.
The DEPUTY CHIEF WHIP OF THE MAJORITY PARTY: The amendment to the Eastern Cape report is as follows: That in paragraph 3.5(b) of the Report, the recommendation that the Committee be approached to assist with headhunting of staff be deleted.
Is that the one you were looking for?
The HOUSE CHAIRPERSON (Ms C-S Botha): That amendment has been agreed to, in which case the motion is that the amended report be adopted. Thank you. Are there any objections?
Motion agreed to.
Report, as amended, accordingly adopted.
CONSIDERATION OF REPORT OF AD HOC COMMITTEE ON AUDITOR-GENERAL – BUDGET AND STRATEGIC PLAN OF OFFICE OF AUDITOR-GENERAL 2006-07
CONSIDERATION OF REPORT OF AD HOC COMMITTEE ON AUDITOR-GENERAL – ANNUAL REPORT OF AUDITOR-GENERAL 2004-05
Ms B A HOGAN: Chairperson, the Auditor-General is probably one of the most important foundations of our democracy. We, as an ad hoc committee, looked at the plans of the Auditor-General, at his budget and his annual report. We have now been transformed into a fully fledged standing committee, which arises out of a statutory obligation of the Public Audit Act. This committee’s task is a very important one. It means that we have to exercise oversight over the Auditor-General. We cannot interfere with the work of the Auditor-General and we need to respect his constitutional independence but we must exercise oversight. I would like to suggest that this is ground-breaking legislation in terms of the relationships of Parliament with the Chapter 9 institutions, because it is an Act that prescribes how the Auditor-General’s office accounts to Parliament.
Many of the issues that we found in the report tabled by Prof Asmal earlier on relating to the Public Protector could have been resolved with some of the measures which are in this Act. We are a new committee, enthusiastic, and have been given very good support staff. We are looking at providing an exemplary way in which we can hold a Chapter 9 institution to account and, most importantly, an institution which is a pillar of democracy.
Let me start by saying that the Auditor-General’s office has responded admirably to the challenges facing it, both in the transition to democracy and now. It has been placed under the onerous burden of the Public Finance Management Act requirements, and has now been placed under the Local Government: Municipal Finance Management Act requirements where there are strict rules about when the audits have to be completed, tabled, etc.
We have seen Mr Fakie, our present Auditor-General, raise major issues of concern fearlessly, without fear or favour and without prejudice in the last couple of years. We are indeed indebted to that office for alerting us as Parliament to areas where we have real problems. We look forward, and we thank Mr Fakie for the sterling work that he has done. He has guided the office, endured difficult times and provided extremely good leadership.
We look forward, pending the President’s approval, to the appointment of our nomination, Mr Terrence Nombembe - who has had considerable experience in the office as a Deputy Auditor-General. We are all very excited about working with him. He is a man who has shown himself to be discreet, and someone who does not seek the limelight but is persistent in demanding high standards. We look forward to supporting him, because one of the important tasks of our committee is that we have to protect the dignity and independence of the Auditor-General’s office.
In that light, we would like to look forward to partnering with Parliament regarding our oversight over that office. However, we are subject to constraints. Unlike other committees we cannot adopt, as Parliament, the budget or the reports on the annual report of the Auditor-General. We can note it and bring it to Parliament to note it, otherwise we would affect the independence of the Auditor-General’s office.
Similarly, we do not do a performance review of the Auditor-General, as that would be interference by politicians. The Auditor-General does not receive a performance bonus, precisely to allow him the independence from interference from whatever quarter. Nevertheless we have a hard task. We need to keep the Auditor-General’s office on its toes.
There are a number of challenges which this office is facing. It needs to face up to the issue that it has competition from the private and public sector for financially trained people. Already, 688 trainee accountants are working in the Office of the Auditor-General. That is a remarkable achievement in getting trained people into the Public Service, but they are often stolen by other departments and the private sector. There is a constant need to replenish staff.
Secondly, the quality of the audits is another challenge. The Auditor- General has independent analysis of the quality of its audits provided by the auditing profession to its office. We have seen a slight decline in the quality of those audits in the recent past, and we are looking to the Auditor-General’s office to reverse that trend. We can understand the reasons, pressures, times and whatever but we do want to see an increase in the quality performance regarding that report.
As far as stakeholder satisfaction is concerned, the Auditor-General’s office is again exemplary in doing a review of stakeholder satisfaction. How many government departments are doing that? We have again seen a small decline in stakeholder satisfaction. We are asking the question: Why? And it might be related to the methodology of establishing that stakeholder satisfaction. But we want the Auditor-General to be looking at that.
The Auditor-General’s office has just undergone a major corporate restructuring process. It is ambitious and is unlike anything that you would find in the Public Service. It will be completed in the year 2007. If it succeeds, it will mean a major boost to the productivity of that office. It is critical that it succeeds because this is a major driver in the present budget of that Auditor-General’s office. If that does not succeed, it means that the auditing staff do not get the backup that they need to do their job. Corporate services need to back up the auditing staff.
The final challenge is one that is imposed by us as Parliament, the National Treasury and by the budget itself. We are going to be moving more and more towards looking at performance auditing. The debate is on as to exactly what we would require in terms of performance auditing. The Auditor- General has already pioneered a certain approach to performance auditing. We, as the committee, will be interrogating that to see if we feel happy.
However, we as parliamentarians do need to have an independent authority that will guide us on the performance of our departments, an independent authority that will guide us on what departments are promising us and what they actually deliver on. We need that from an independent assessor. We can’t have it coming only from the departments themselves, saying that they are performing according to what they have promised. We need that independent assessment. That is going to be one of the major challenges facing this organisation.
In conclusion, might I say that the major challenges facing this office, I have no doubt, will be dealt with very competently by the present Auditor- General and whoever comes into his position as the Deputy Auditor-General once that transition has taken place.
We have seen the Office of the Auditor-General grow from strength to strength, and I have now had the privilege of interacting with three Auditor-Generals in my life as a parliamentarian. We have seen it face challenges and we have seen it modernise itself in a way that often sets an example to those in the private and public sectors.
We look forward to not only holding the Auditor-General to account but ensuring that his work is defended to the full, that his dignity is not impaired, and that he can do the job which we, who love the Constitution, have tasked him to do. And so, I offer these reports from our committee to be noted in this Parliament. I thank you. There was no debate. The CHIEF WHIP OF THE MAJORITY PARTY: Chair, I move that the reports be adopted.
Motion agreed to.
Reports accordingly adopted.
CONSIDERATION OF REQUEST FOR APPROVAL BY PARLIAMENT OF AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE GOVERNMENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA AND THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED REPUBLIC OF TANZANIA FOR THE AVOIDANCE OF DOUBLE TAXATION AND THE PREVENTION OF FISCAL EVASION WITH RESPECT TO TAXES ON INCOME
CONSIDERATION OF REQUEST FOR APPROVAL BY PARLIAMENT OF CONVENTION BETWEEN THE GOVERNMENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA AND THE KINGDOM OF SPAIN FOR THE AVOIDANCE OF DOUBLE TAXATION AND THE PREVENTION OF FISCAL EVASION WITH RESPECT TO TAXES ON INCOME AND ON CAPITAL
Mr N M NENE: Chairperson, when the ANC took power in 1994 and established a constitutionally governed democratic state, the economic borders were opened, allowing for free trade with the rest of the world. This presented our democracy with some opportunities and challenges that require an appropriate legislative framework to be put in place, in order to regulate the flow of capital and investment.
The double taxation agreements are but one of those legislative instruments that create an economic environment conducive to doing business in and outside of our borders. In 1994, only about 10 agreements were in operation and, since then, more than 45 have been signed, bringing the total to 58 as we speak.
In terms of section 231 (2) of our Constitution, these treaties have to be ratified by this House. The treaties presented to you today are standard, based on the United Nations model and the Organisation for Economic Co- operation and Development model, and cater for some of the unique matters in relation to the countries under consideration.
This is the culmination of a long process that involves intense negotiations with the purpose of removing tax barriers to cross-border trade and investment. This it does by, firstly, eliminating double taxation and, secondly, promoting certainty of tax treatment, reducing tax rates, lowering compliance costs, preventing fiscal evasion, preventing tax discrimination, resolving tax disputes and assisting in tax collection.
The committee is convinced that these two conventions will not make the South African taxpayers worse off, and will be of mutual benefit to the economies of our country and the two countries concerned, that is Spain and Tanzania. On behalf of the committee, I present these treaties for consideration and ratification by this House. Thank you. [Applause.]
Agreement between the Government of the Republic of South Africa and the Government of the United Republic of Tanzania for the avoidance of double taxation and the prevention of fiscal evasion with respect to taxes on income approved.
Convention between the Government of the Republic of South Africa and the Kingdom of Spain for the avoidance of double taxation and the prevention of fiscal evasion with respect to taxes on income and capital approved.
The House adjourned at 16:40. _____
ANNOUNCEMENTS, TABLINGS AND COMMITTEE REPORTS
ANNOUNCEMENTS
National Assembly and National Council of Provinces
The Speaker and the Chairperson
- Assent by President in respect of Bills
1) 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa Special Measures Bill [B 13B –
2006] - Act No 11 of 2006 (assented to and signed by President on 1
September 2006).
2) Second 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa Special Measures Bill [B
16B – 2006] – Act No 12 of 2006 (assented to and signed by
President on 1 September 2006).
- Introduction of Bills
(1) The Minister of Trade and Industry
a) Measurement Units and Measurement Standards Bill [B 21 – 2006]
(National Assembly – proposed sec 75) [Explanatory summary of
Bill and prior notice of its introduction published in
Government Gazette No 29170 of 31 August 2006.]
Introduction and referral to the Portfolio Committee on Trade
and Industry of the National Assembly, as well as referral to
the Joint Tagging Mechanism (JTM) for classification in terms
of Joint Rule 160.
In terms of Joint Rule 154 written views on the classification
of the Bill may be submitted to the JTM within three
parliamentary working days.
2) The Minister of Communications
a) Postal Services Amendment Bill [B 22 – 2006] (National
Assembly – proposed sec 75) [Explanatory summary of Bill and
prior notice of its introduction published in Government
Gazette No 29164 of 25 August 2006.]
Introduction and referral to the Portfolio Committee on
Communications of the National Assembly, as well as referral
to the Joint Tagging Mechanism (JTM) for classification in
terms of Joint Rule 160.
In terms of Joint Rule 154 written views on the classification
of the Bill may be submitted to the JTM within three
parliamentary working days.
National Assembly
The Speaker
- Submission of Private Members’ Legislative Proposals
(1) The following private member’s legislative proposal was
submitted to the Speaker on 7 September 2006 in accordance with
Rule 234:
a) Constitution Sixteenth Amendment Bill (Mr S N Swart)
In accordance with Rule 235 the legislative proposal has been
referred to the Standing Committee on Private Members’
Legislative Proposals and Special Petitions. TABLINGS
National Assembly and National Council of Provinces
-
The Minister of Arts and Culture
a) Report and Financial Statements of the Afrikaans Language Museum for 2005-2006, including the Report of the Auditor-General on the Financial Statements for 2005-2006.
b) Report and Financial Statements of the Northern Flagship Institution for 2005-2006, including the Report of the Auditor- General on the Financial Statements for 2005-2006 [RP 142-2006].
c) Report and Financial Statements of the National Heritage Council for 2005-2006, including the Report of the Auditor-General on the Financial Statements for 2005-2006.
-
The Minister of Communications
a) Report and Financial Statements of the Sentech Limited for 2005- 2006, including the Report of the Independent Auditors on the Financial Statements for 2005-2006.
-
The Minister of Education
a) Report and Financial Statements of the Department of Education for 2005-2006, including the Report of the Auditor-General on the Financial Statements of Vote 15 – Department of Education for 2005- 2006.
-
The Minister of Trade and Industry
a) Report and Financial Statements of the Competition Commission for 2005-2006, including the Report of the Auditor-General on the Financial Statements for 2005-2006 [RP 101-2006].
COMMITTEE REPORTS
National Assembly
-
Report of the Portfolio Committee on Communications on the filling of vacancies on the Council of the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa, dated 7 September 2006:
The Portfolio Committee on Communications, having considered the request of the National Assembly to submit a shortlist of candidates for appointment as councillors of the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) to the Minister of Communications, referred to it, reports as follows:
The Committee invited the public to nominate persons for consideration and recommendation to the Minister for the filling of vacancies on the Council. Nominations and applications were received from 58 candidates.
The Committee considered the nominations on 25 August 2006 and agreed that the following persons be shortlisted to be interviewed from 28 to 30 August 2006:
Mr R Nkuna, Ms J Wagner, Ms B Ntombela, Dr G Boloka, Ms M Mohlala, Ambassador A Nkomo, Ms L Cassie, Dr M Socikwa, Ms NB Gila, Ms D Love, Ms M Matlala, Mr LM Ncetezo, Ms I Wilken, Adv A Alberts, Ms WH Mayimele, Ms KA Serero-Chiloane, Mr M Tom, Dr AJ Barendse, Prof JCW van Rooyen and Mr M Lekgoro.
Mr M Lekgoro subsequently withdrew his nomination.
After having considered the shortlist, and after having interviewed the candidates, the Committee recommends that the House, in terms of section 7 of the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa Amendment Act (Act 3 of 2006) submits to the Minister a list of suitable candidates at least one and a half times the number of councillors to be appointed, namely:
Dr AJ Barendse, Ms M Matlala, Ms M Mohlala, Mr R Nkuna, Ms B Ntombela, Ms KA Serero-Chiloane, Dr M Socikwa and Prof JCW van Rooyen.
Report to be considered.