Defence Laws Repeal and Amendment Bill [B7-2015]

The Portfolio Committee on Defence and Military Veterans invites you to submit written comment on the Defence Laws Repeal and Amendment Bill [B7-2015].

The South African Law Reform Commission has recommended the repeal of those laws considered to be redundant, and the amendment of those inconsistent with the Constitution’s equality clause. The Defence Laws Repeal and Amendment Bill [B7 -2015] therefore seeks to repeal sixteen Defence laws and proposes an amendment to the Castle Management Act, 1993.

Comments can be emailed to Mandy Balie at [email protected] by no later than 12h00 on Friday, 20 March 2015

Enquiries can be directed to Mandy Balie on tel (021) 403 3673 or cell 083 709 8431

Issued by Mr MS Motimele, MP, Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee Defence and Military Veterans.

Background
The South African Law Reform Commission (SALRC) has been mandated with the task of revising the South African statute book with a view to identifying and recommending the repeal or amendment of laws that are inconsistent with the equality clause in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 (the Constitution), or redundant and obsolete. In Discussion Paper 123 of the SALRC the following is mentioned: ‘‘1.7 Statutory law revision is the review of status to determine whether they need updating or are still relevant and enjoy practical application. The purpose of the review is to modernise and simplify those statutes that need modernising or updating and to reduce the size of the statute book to the benefit of legal professionals and all other parties who make use of it. It also ensures people are not misled by obsolete laws on the statute book which seem to be relevant or ‘live’ law. If legislation features on the statute book and is referred to in text-books, users reasonably enough assume those statutes still serve a purpose. 1.8 Legislation identified for repeal is selected on the basis that it is no longer of practical utility. Usually this is or because these laws no longer have any legal effect on technical grounds, because they are spent, unnecessary or obsolete. But sometimes they are selected because, although strictly speaking they do continue to have legal effect, the purposes for which they were enacted, either no longer exist, or are currently being met by alternative means.’’. The SALRC identified a number of laws administered by the Department of Defence and Military Veterans that are obsolete or redundant and that need to be repealed. The Bill therefore seeks to repeal those laws.