WOMEN IN SPORT

• The Department of Sport, Arts and Culture has gazetted a draft policy on women in sport but has not set a deadline for public comment.
• According to its executive summary, once operationalised the proposed new policy is expected to go some way towards ensuring ‘redress’ for ‘existing inequalities’ creating obstacles to the participation of girls and women in competition, coaching, officiating and leadership. To that end, the many issues explored include:
  • socio-cultural values stemming from South Africa’s ‘entrenched patriarchal ideology’ and related gender role stereotyping
  • inadequate media coverage of women’s sport and the difficulties associated with attracting advertising and sponsorship
  • issues specific to transgender and intersex athletes, sex-verification and testosterone levels, and
  • gender-based violence in sport.

 

LOCAL GOVERNMENT

• Democratic Alliance Deputy Chief Whip Siviwe Gwarube has gazetted a notice:
  • announcing her intention to prepare a Local Government: Municipal Structures Amendment Bill for tabling in Parliament
  • serving as the proposed new Bill’s explanatory summary, and
  • calling for proposals on its contents (the final page of which is missing).
• The Bill envisaged will seek to amend the principal statute by:
  • inserting ‘an electoral threshold into the calculation and allocation of seats in councils so that parties … (are required) to obtain the number of the votes equal to the seat quota +1 before … (being) considered for seat calculations and allocations’,
  • thereby addressing the unworkability of local level coalition governments comprising as many as ten (or more) ‘smaller parties’, ‘continuously’ lobbied by larger parties in a coalition to ‘retract … in exchange for positions or favour’.

 

ONLINE INTERMEDIATION PLATFORM MARKET INQUIRY

• The Competition Commission has issued a media statement on a Government Gazette notice extending to 19 May 2023 the deadline for concluding the inquiry and publishing a final report.

 

ELECTRICITY REGULATION

• The Department of Mineral Resources and Energy has gazetted an explanatory summary of the Electricity Regulation Amendment Bill recently approved by Cabinet for tabling in Parliament.
• The Bill will seek to:

• strengthen the role of the National Energy Regulator of South Africa
• strengthen provisions in the Act for licensable and exempted activities
• provide for the transitional measures required in creating a ‘transmission system operator’, and
• define its functions, which will include:
  • establishing a multi-market electricity trading platform, and
  • facilitating ‘access to the transmission network on a non-discriminatory basis’.

 

SMALL CLAIMS COURTS

• Justice and Constitutional Development Minister John Jeffrey has confirmed in a recent speech that new rules for the Small Claims Courts came into effect on 1 April 2023, when those in place since 1985 were repealed.
• Gazetted in October 2022, the revised rules provide for:
  • ‘new procedures’
  • ‘require new forms to be used’, and
  • place ‘new responsibilities … on clerks and functionaries of the Small Claims Courts’.

 

COMMISSION FOR CONCILIATION, MEDIATION AND ARBITRATION (CCMA)

• The CCMA has updated its rules on the conduct of proceedings to reflect all amendments made since October 2003.

 

FOODSTUFFS LABELLING AND ADVERTISING

• The Department of Health has called for public comments on a third set of draft foodstuffs labelling and advertising regulations.
• According to Page 311 of the latest draft, the document replaces one released in January for public comment. The status of a draft gazetted on 14 April is not clear.
• Once in force, the proposed new regulations will repeal those published in December 1991, November 2010 and January 2012.

 

WASTE MANAGEMENT

• The Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment has extended the deadline for public comments on:
  • draft amendments to the existing waste classification and management regulations
  • draft norms and standards for assessing the suitability of waste for disposal to landfill, and
  • draft amendments to the norms and standards on disposing waste to landfill.

 

AIR QUALITY MANAGEMENT

• The Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment has called for public comments on proposed amendments to the 2014 declaration of ‘temporary’ asphalt plants as controlled emitters.
• Once published, among other things the amended declaration and related emission standards will:
  • distinguish between ‘existing’ and ‘new’ temporary asphalt plants’, and
  • define a ‘temporary asphalt plant’ as one operational and used for no more than 24 months.

 

PUBLIC SERVICE & ADMINISTRATION

• In anticipation of tabling in Parliament two Bills recently approved by Cabinet, the Department of Public Service and Administration has gazetted:
  • an explanatory summary of the Public Service Amendment Bill and a memorandum on its objects, along with
  • an explanatory summary of the Public Administration Management Amendment Bill and a memorandum on its objects.
• The Public Service Amendment Bill seeks to align the principal statute with:
  • various court decisions relating to public administration, and
  • matters identified in a South African Law Reform Commission report.
• The Public Administration Management Amendment Bill seeks to facilitate the effective implementation of the principal Act by addressing challenges associated with:
  • ‘fiscal and other considerations’
  • policy and responsibility ‘overlaps’ with related legislation
  • certain ‘onerous’ inter-ministerial concurrence requirements affecting secondary legislation, and
  • ‘unfair’ disparities in remuneration and working conditions.

 

Prepared by Pam Saxby