PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEES

• Parliament issued:
  • a media statement on the number of committee seats allocated to each political party represented in the National Assembly, and
  • a separate media statement on the composition of NCOP cluster committees.
• This is noting that:
  • the number of National Assembly committees and their titles will depend on the composition of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s new Cabinet, and that
  • the election of and NCOP Deputy Chair is scheduled to take place on 2 July 2024.

 

CHILDREN’S ACT

• The Department of Social Development gazetted amendments to the general regulations on children. Among other things, they prescribe:
  • criteria for establishing and resourcing childcare and protection units
  • procedures to be followed when screening and assessing children entering the child protection system, as well as when investigating related circumstances and placing children
  • criteria to be met by child protection organisations and provincial departments providing for and managing ‘cluster foster care’, and
  • procedures for submitting reports to the national child protection register and its management.

 

SCHOOL INFRASTRUCTURE

• The Department of Basic Education gazetted replacement minimum norms and standards for the infrastructure of all state-run schools. This follows the unexplained withdrawal of minimum norms and standards published on 28 May 2024. Immediately effective, among other things the new regulations:
  • apply to existing and proposed new schools
  • allow existing schools without access to any form of power supply, water supply or sanitation 12 months to adjust their plans for implementing the applicable school infrastructure programme, and
  • prescribe timeframes for the submission of related annual provincial plans as well as end-of-financial-year evaluation and progress reports.

 

COMPETITION ACT

• The Competition Commission called for public comments on draft guidelines for indivisible transactions under the Competition Act, 1998. Their purpose is to assist merger parties when structuring and notifying the Commission of multiple transactions. Once finalised, the guidelines:
  • will outline the Commission’s approach ‘when evaluating whether two or more transactions … can be filed … under a single merger notification where each transaction on its own constitutes a merger’
  • will not be market, sector or industry specific, and
  • will not prevent the Commission from ‘exercising its discretion on a case-by-case basis … (as to) whether multiple transactions should be notified and assessed under a single merger filing’.

 

Prepared by Pam Saxby