OLDER PERSONS AMENDMENT BILL UPDATE

OLDER PERSONS AMENDMENT BILL UPDATE

• 01 October 2024
• Social Development
• SA Legal Academy

The National Assembly’s Social Development Committee has issued a media statement drawing attention to several provisions in the Older Persons Amendment Bill previously overlooked by reports on its passage through Parliament. This is noting that the proposed new piece of legislation is now before the NCOP’s Social Services Committee, which recently called for written submissions.

Among other things, the media statement refers to clauses in the Bill seeking to:

• curb ‘harmful traditional practices, including witchcraft accusations against older persons’
• ensure that the elderly are ‘capacitated with knowledge on non-communicable diseases’, and to
• recognise the role older people play in ‘passing knowledge and wisdom’ to younger family members.

In fact, clause 6 proposes that the Act should make it the ‘responsibility’ of elderly people to:

• ‘foster and facilitate inter-generational dialogue and solidarity’ within their families and communities, and
• ‘play a role in mediation and conflict resolution’.

As it now stands, the Bill’s clause 5 requires ‘anyone dealing with an older person’ to ‘take all … measures necessary to eliminate traditional practices, including witchcraft accusations, which may affect the welfare, health, life and dignity of that older person’.

Could the drafters and the previous Parliament’s National Assembly Social Development Committee have overlooked the importance of wording these clauses to avoid possible misinterpretation and abuse?

Not all elderly people find themselves in circumstances conducive to passing on knowledge, experience or wisdom. Not all elderly people have the capacity to do so. And, presumably, there are traditional practices with positive implications for the welfare, health, life and dignity of older people.

Something is wrong.

• Bill’s ‘B’ version
• media statement

Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch

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