16 September 2024

From the Government Gazette and Media Statements (16 September 2024)

None

BELA ACT

  • President Cyril Ramaphosa’s speech at the Basic Education Laws Amendment (BELA) Bill signing ceremony confirmed that:
    • the BELA Act has joined the statute books
    • the implementation of its school language and admission policy provisions is on hold pending the outcome of further discussions
    • ‘parties to the Government of National Unity’ now have three months to ‘make proposals on how the(ir) different views may be accommodated’, and that
    • should no agreement be reached, the provisions concerned will be implemented as they now stand.
  • At the time of writing, the amendment Act had not yet been gazetted.

 

POLITICAL PARTY DONATION LIMITATIONS

  • The Home Affairs Portfolio Committee issued a media statement announcing that:
    • public hearings will form part of the process of drafting the National Assembly resolution required to give effect to a recent Western Cape High Court ruling on a lacunae in the Electoral Matters Amendment Act, 2024, regarding political party donation and disclosure limitations, and that
    • the draft resolution will seek to ensure that:
  • the upper limit of donations per financial year is set at R15m and
  • the disclosure limit per financial year is set at R100 thousand.
  • These amounts featured in sections 7 (upper limit of donation) and 9 (disclosure limit) of the Political Parties Funding Act, 2018, but were removed by the Electoral Matters Amendment Act when it came into force on 8 May 2024.

 

MAINTENANCE ACT REGULATIONS

The Department of Justice and Constitutional Development called for public comments on draft amendments to regulations under the Maintenance Act, 1998, dealing with the setting aside or variation of an order. The amendments envisaged focus on procedures to be followed by a maintenance officer and the form to be used.

 

B-BBEE: LEGAL SECTOR CODE OF GOOD PRACTICE

  • The Justice and Constitutional Development Portfolio Committee issued a media statement welcoming the finalisation of a broad-based black economic empowerment (B-BBEE) code of good practice for the legal sector. The statement appears to have been informed by an SAnews article announcing the code’s approval by Trade, Industry and Competition Minister, Parks Tau. The article was drawn from an official press release posted on X by the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition but not published on its website at the time.
  • Both documents and the committee media statement refer to:
    • ‘an ownership target of 50% and black women ownership of 25% over 5 years’
    • ‘a management control (executive and board participation) target of 50% representation of black practitioners and a target of 25% for black women practitioners, particularly as equity partners and associates’
    • ‘a skills development target of 3.5% expenditure on training programmes for black candidates’, and
    • ‘a procurement target of 60% by the private sector … (with) a target of 80 % to be achieved through the specialised procurement scorecard applicable to the public sector’.
  • At the time of writing, the new code had not yet been gazetted.

 

ONE-STOP BORDER POST BILL

  • A One-stop Boarder Post Bill was tabled in Parliament with the aim of:
    • regulating the establishment of these facilities through international agreements with adjoining countries (among other things on ‘common control zones’ in each territory concerned, where South African criminal law would apply)
    • prescribing ‘processing arrangements’
  • ensuring ‘border law enforcement’
  • facilitating the ‘free transfer of money or goods within the common control zones’, and
  • obligating a country of departure to ‘readmit’ a person, goods, animal or vehicle either refused entry to an adjoining country or found to have entered that country illegally.

 

Prepared by Pam Saxby

None
People's Assembly

We host the latest posts of this blog, written by People's Assembly. You can find more on PA's blog.

Share this page: