PUBLIC SECTOR COST-CUTTING

• National Treasury published guidelines on implementing cost containment measures introduced in August 2023 (Politicsweb) with the intention of:
  • assisting government accounting officers and authorities in their efforts to ‘reduce the pace of expenditure’, and
  • preventing ‘the materialisation of potentially crippling resource constraints in the later part of the 2023/24 financial year’.
• The measures and guidelines seek to respond to ongoing ‘fiscal challenges’ originating ‘mainly’ from:
  • ‘an exceptionally large year-to-date decline in government tax revenue collections’
  • tighter financial conditions:
    • constraining government borrowing, and
    • ‘exacerbated’ by the March 2023 public sector wage settlement, and
  • failed ‘claw-back mechanisms’.

 

PUBLIC PROCUREMENT

• In his speech at a National Treasury public finance management conference, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana described ‘the ethical sourcing of goods and services through public procurement’ as ‘an unassailable priority’ in responding to the ‘difficult fiscal situation’ in which South Africa now finds itself.
• The Minister attributed this situation to:
  • the materialisation of ‘short-term risks to the local and global economy … predicted in the February Budget’
  • ‘much lower-than-expected tax revenue’, and
  • dwindling opportunities ‘to borrow more and at affordable rates’.
• According to the Minister, it has been made ‘even more challenging’ by:
  • ‘continued loadshedding’
  • the ‘poor performance’ of South Africa’s ‘logistics sectors’, and
  • ‘the lasting damage done by state capture’ to the country’s institutions
• The Minister also drew attention to the ‘pivotal role’ of ‘rigorous and independent audit practices’ in:
  • ‘unearthing corruption and financial mismanagement’, and
  • ‘providing invaluable insights and recommendations for the judicious utilisation of public funds’.

 

GENERAL INTELLIGENCE LAWS AMENDMENT BILL

• According to the minutes of a sitting of the House on 21 September 2023, the National Assembly established an ad hoc committee to consider and report on the yet-to-be-tabled General Intelligence Laws Amendment Bill, also:
  • prescribing the number of MPs each political party represented in Parliament may appoint serve on the committee
  • empowering it to exercise any powers set out in National Assembly Rule 167 that ‘may assist it in carrying out its task’, and
  • setting 1 March 2024 as the deadline by which the committee is expected to have  completed its work on the Bill.
• A draft of the Bill was submitted to Parliament on 29 August 2023 in terms of Joint Rule 159, which allows a pre-certification draft to be sent to the committee concerned for information and planning purposes only.
• The 24 May 2023 media statement on the Cabinet meeting at which the Bill was approved noted, among other things, that its purpose is to give effect to:
  • recommendations made by the presidential high-level review panel on South Africa’s State Security Agency, and
  • a plan for implementing Zondo Commission recommendations.

 

CANNABIS FOR PRIVATE PURPOSES BILL

• According to the minutes of a House sitting on 19 September 2023, the National Assembly’s Justice and Correctional Services Committee was granted permission to extend the scope of the Cannabis for Private Purposes Bill to respond to a Constitutional Court March 2022 ‘Centre for Child Law judgment’ regarding the best interest of children found in possession of cannabis and being processed within the criminal justice system.

 

CONSERVATION

• The Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment:
  • gazetted a https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/202309/49322gon3889.pdf replacement draft policy on the conservation and sustainable use of elephant, leopard, lion and rhino, on which public comments are now being sought, and
  • issued a https://www.gov.za/speeches/minister-barbara-creecy-invites-comments-draft-policy-position-conservation-and-sustainable media statement among other things:
    • drawing attention to ‘three international commercial trade-related policy objectives’ explored in the document, and
    • noting government’s intention to end the commercial exploitation of captive and captive-bred lions.

 

MERCHANT SHIPPING

• The Department of Transport called for public comments on draft amendments to regulations under the Merchant Shipping Act, 1951. Focusing on the carriage of dangerous goods, among other things the proposed amendments:
  • impose stricter vessel survey and certification of fitness requirements
  • empower inspectors to conduct container inspection and packing
  • bring marine pollutants under the ambit of what will eventually become the amended regulations, and
  • introduce provisions expressly dealing with the carriage of packaged irradiated nuclear fuel, plutonium and high-level radioactive waste.

 

Prepared by Pam Saxby