Cape Town -
Civil society groups opposed to the fiercely contested Traditional Courts Bill were outraged on Wednesday after it emerged the chairman of the committee dealing with the bill had asked the Justice Department to summarise for consideration by the committee only two of the 22 submissions made during the recent public hearings on the bill because “the issues raised in the other submissions were irrelevant to the bill”.
The groups accused Tjheta Mofokeng, the chairman of the National Council of Provinces’ (NCOP) select committee on security and constitutional development, of abusing his position and Parliament’s values.
They also accused him of being “bamboozled” by the Justice Department and questioned why the committee had not yet deliberated on the September hearings.
Opposition MPs on the committee also voiced concern, saying it was an insult to all the other organisations who had made submissions on the bill.
The Justice Department presented the committee on Wednesday with summaries of the issues raised by the SA Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) and the Department of Women, Children and People with Disabilities, with its responses.
A key concern cited by the SAHRC, which wants the bill completely overhauled and rewritten, was the ambiguity in the bill on whether the traditional courts may be courts or tribunals.
Further concerns were that there had been insufficient consultation on the bill at a local level and among people who would be directly affected by it, that the period allowed for making submissions had been too short and that the bill had been reintroduced in the NCOP without addressing the concerns raised in 2008, when the bill was introduced in the National Assembly before being withdrawn under fierce opposition.
Mofokeng confirmed that he had asked the Justice Department to prepare the summaries of the two submissions because the other submissions “did not address what the bill seeks to achieve”.
The committee decided on Wednesday that its members would again be returning to their constituencies in the provinces to get a mandate on the way forward on the bill.
The committee has been given an extension to finalise the matter.
Dr Aninka Claassens of UCT’s Law, Race and Gender Unit described Mofokeng’s move as “confounding”.
“What we have here is people who have made every effort to use the parliamentary process to express their views being fundamentally rejected and insulted,” she said.
“The other extraordinary thing is that, clearly, the committee did not know that the chairman had made this very far-reaching decision that the submissions would not be summarised as they ordinarily are by researchers but by the Department of Justice. But much more surprising is the fact that only two would be summarised as the rest were irrelevant as far as the chair is concerned.
“As far as I am concerned that is an abuse of Parliament’s values and an abuse of his position as chair .. because surely such a decision with such far-reaching consequences should have been taken by the whole committee and not unilaterally by him.
“The problem is not solved, because although the committee expressed outrage at what he had done and insisted that the provinces would look at the submissions, no arrangement was made about an alternative summary… This is just a continuation of the deep bias and exclusion which this bill has exhibited since 2008.”
Nombonisa Gasa of the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution (Casac) accused Mofokeng of flouting proper procedures.
“There is no way this bill can pass the procedural test. The Department of Justice has no legal standing to be in this committee and make a summary. The research department should do that. It is open to question whether the chairperson of the committee can make that decision.”
Accusing the department of abusing its power and undermining Parliament, Gasa continued: “In agreement and collaboration with the committee, they have undermined the principle of separation of powers. They have bullied their way into this, manipulated the process and played party politics on a legislative process.
“On top of this, the chairman has said that the real experiences of people… do not matter – so the people who came here (to give submissions) in September all of a sudden do not matter.”
Independent Democrats MP John Gunda voiced strong disagreement with Mofokeng’s assertion on the irrelevance of other submissions.
“I disagree… We have listened to a range of submissions… Are they now irrelevant? Why is it that their inputs are now excluded?”
Cope MP Dennis Bloem said: “This is an insult to all the other parties and organisations that made inputs… We have spent taxpayers’ money on a whole week of public hearings to listen to what people have said. That was the reason for having public hearings.”
Political Bureau