The South African government has tabled six new pieces of legislation to greet MPs as they return from their month-long winter break to start the new term on Tuesday.
The Bills, with one exception, are all amendment Bills tidying up earlier legislation or making arrangements to deal with problems that have arisen since the original laws were passed.
A Bill amending the National Gambling Act is introduced to deal with internet gambling, which is at present inadequately regulated, if at all. It provides a legal basis for “interactive gambling” and requires approval for interactive games, gambling equipment and software. It also provides dispute-resolution mechanisms between players and interactive providers.
Since gambling is a concurrent function between national and provincial governments, there is scope for constitutional clashes over the Bill, as there was with the original Act. It does, however, propose the allocation of some functions to provincial licensing authorities.
The one wholly new Bill — the Social Housing Bill — has been developed to provide a legal framework for the regulation of low-income housing.
The Bill itself defines social housing as “a rental or cooperative housing option for low- to medium-income households at a level of scale and built form which requires institutionalised management and which is provided by social housing institutions”.
Under the Bill the national government will be mostly responsible for creating a sustainable environment for social housing by financing the programme. Provincial governments will be responsible for administering the national housing programme applicable to social housing, including the approval and administration of grant funding.
Municipalities will be given the job of facilitating delivery in their areas of jurisdiction, while the National Housing Finance Corporation will participate by improving access to loan funding.
Bodies that are not accredited social-housing institutions may take part in approved projects based on the terms of agreement made with a Social Housing Regulatory Authority. This authority is also set up by the Bill.
Rental housing was covered in the Rental Housing Act of 1999, but has had some problems with implementation, and the Rental Housing Amendment Bill aims to address some of them.
It makes the definition of an “unfair practice” broader, and tightens up the preconditions for seizing a tenant’s possessions. It takes away the power of provincial ministers to make regulations, and gives it instead exclusively to the minister.
“This amendment has been necessitated by the need to ensure uniformity throughout the country,” says a memorandum on the objects of the Bill.
The Department of Transport is faced with the problem that the public entities under its control were all established by separate Acts of Parliament, and the processes for appointing a board for each of them are cumbersome, and time-consuming. The Transport General Laws Amendment Bill tries to overcome this by amending each of those Acts to streamline and unify the processes.
The Local Government Laws Amendment Bill is a catch-all measure designed to improve the worst hiccups in implementing the Demarcation Act, the Municipal Structures Act, the Municipal Systems Act and the Rates Act.
Among other things, it tidies up the various references to the municipal financial year, extends the definition of political office-bearer to include deputy executive mayors, and limits a municipal manager’s term of office to five years.
More controversially — especially in Cape Town, where there is already a dispute between the mayor and the provincial minister on the subject — the Bill provides for the compulsory establishment of ward committees.
The Correctional Services Amendment Bill seeks to amend the original Act to bring it into line with the white paper on correctional services. — I-Net Bridge