SOUTH AFRICAN SIGN LANGUAGE

• The Constitution 18th Amendment Bill was signed into law, formalising the status of South African sign language by making it the country’s 12th official language.
• According to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s remarks at the signing ceremony, ‘much more work still needs to be done to support this language’, which ‘has to be standardised to collapse various geographical dialects into one … official version’.
• At the time of writing, the new Act had not yet been gazetted.

ADMINISTRATIVE ADJUDICATION OF ROAD TRAFFIC OFFENCES ACT

• Transport Minister Sindisiwe Chikunga issued a media statement among other things announcing that the Act, as amended:
  • will be fully operationalised on 1 July 2024, and
  • is expected to make a ‘telling difference’ to road user behaviour by ‘introducing severe penalties’ in addition to a points demerit system, including ‘attaching (the) movable properties of infringers’.
• In anticipation of the Act’s commencement nationwide, the Department of Transport has:
  • completed its work on the required ‘adjudication process’
  • established a system for ‘the electronic service of infringements
  • drafted revised regulations in liaison with the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development, on which provincial concurrence is now being finalised, and
  • prepared ‘recommendations to the President for the appointment of the tribunal’.

COALITION GOVERNMENTS

• The NCOP’s Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Water and Sanitation and Human Settlements Committee issued a media statement expressing concern about ‘persistent political instability in the City of Johannesburg’.
• Coinciding with the release of a coalition government framework ‘concept discussion document’ for public comment, the statement pointed to frequent changes in the city’s political leadership as one reason for:
  • planning and implementation shortcomings
  • a significant increase in irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure, and
  • the inadequate ‘consequence management’ of underperforming councillors.

NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT PLANNING FRAMEWORK BILL

• The National Planning Commission issued a media statement urging Deputy President Paul Mashatile to apply ‘the weight of his office’ to Parliament with the aim of ensuring the Bill’s ‘speedy passage’ through the institution once tabled.
• According to the statement, the Bill will seek to:
  • ‘embed and institutionalise a coherent planning system across government, … inclusive of the broader citizenry’
  • ‘centralise the National Development Plan in the long-term planning processes of both the state and government’, and
  • formalise the Commission and the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation as ‘key’, ‘permanent … planning instruments’.
• Similar objectives underpinned a draft Integrated Planning Framework Bill gazetted in May 2018 for public comment.

JUDGES REMUNERATION AND CONDITIONS OF EMPLOYMENT ACT

• Two sets of amendments to the Act’s regulations were gazetted and are now in force:
  • amendments to regulations affecting leave, and
  • amendments to regulations affecting travel and subsistence allowances, as well as the cost of maintaining a practice for the duration of an appointment.

 

Prepared by Pam Saxby