PUBLIC PARTICIPATION IN LAW-MAKING PROCESS CONTINUES DURING WINTER RECESS

PUBLIC PARTICIPATION IN LAW-MAKING PROCESS CONTINUES DURING WINTER RECESS

• 27 July 2023
• Parliament
• SA Legal Academy

Several National Assembly and provincial legislature committees have used the winter recess to conduct public hearings on some of the Bills tabled during 2022, along with a few introduced even earlier. They are all section 76 Bills affecting the provinces.

It has never been clear why National Assembly committees conduct hearings in the provinces on section 76 Bills. Not all National Assembly committees do.

Interestingly, the term ‘public hearing’ only features twice in the National Assembly Rules, once in the NCOP Rules and once in the Joint Rules of Parliament. The term ‘public participation’ features only in the NCOP Rules and Joint Rules of Parliament – where it is used to prescribe how members of the public may participate in House or committee proceedings.

One way is to make representations or recommendations in writing on a Bill – or to give evidence, presumably during a hearing. Yet, apparently, public hearings are not mandatory. According to the rules, National Assembly and NCOP committees ‘may’ conduct hearings – and ‘must’ do so only when jointly considering fiscal framework and revenue proposals (page 199 of the National Assembly Rules).

If the Bill processing procedures to be followed by a National Assembly or NCOP committee have been documented at all, they are not publicly available.

Against that backdrop, the only legally binding requirement to be met by the National Assembly, NCOP and their committees regarding public participation in the law-making process is that they should ‘facilitate’ it [sub-sections 59(1) and 72(1) of the Constitution].

With all that in mind, perhaps conducting provincial hearings at National Assembly committee level enables members to familiarise themselves with grassroots perspectives on Bills directly affecting the lives of ordinary South Africans – and to weigh these against the perspectives of stakeholder representative groups expressed in often complex written submissions.

Presumably, the same motive underpins hearings held by the provincial legislatures before preparing their negotiating mandates on a section 76 Bill.

Whatever the case, according to recent committee media statements Bills on which National Assembly committees are busy hearing the views of ordinary South Africans are:

• the Climate Change Bill, 2022
• the Independent Municipal Demarcation Authority Bill, 2022
• the Older Persons Amendment Bill, 2022, and
• the Preservation & Development of Agricultural Land Bill, 2021

According to parliamentary records on the status of section 76 Bills now before the NCOP, committees in the provincial legislatures are busy conducting hearings on:

• the National Land Transport Amendment Bill , 2016 (‘F’ version) (Limpopo)
• the National Health Insurance Bill, 2019 (‘B’ version) (KwaZulu-Natal)
• the Economic Regulation of Transport Bill, 2020 (‘B’ version) (Limpopo)
• the Expropriation Bill, 2020 (‘B’ version) (Eastern Cape), and
• the National Road Traffic Amendment Bill, 2020 (‘B’ version) (Limpopo)

Please click the links below for more information:

• National Assembly Rules
• NCOP Rules
• Joint Rules
• status of section 76 Bills now before the NCOP

Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch

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