The Democratic Alliance (DA) says it is disgusted by the out-of-hand rejection of MP James Selfe’s draft Bill by the chairperson of the select committee on private member’s legislative proposals and special petitions, Vytjie Mentor.
Selfe’s proposed Bill sought to allow for the creation of a simple mechanism whereby those crimes created under apartheid laws — which would not be crimes in South Africa today and which would not be considered as crimes in any normal society — could be administratively expunged from a person’s ”criminal” record.
”There are a great many South Africans who, because this problem has never been addressed by the government, have criminal records because they committed ‘crimes’ which today are considered simply ridiculous,” Davidson said.
Examples included people who had been barred from overseas travel because they had sex with someone of another race or owned land in an area designated for another racial group under apartheid.
”Mentor’s response to this proposal was to say: ‘This is the ideology of DA superiority of the white race. Everything they do, you find fault in their argument’.
”Not only is her response incoherent, but in choosing to reject a private member’s Bill she has never received, Ms Mentor is both treating parliamentary procedure with contempt and single-handedly trying to make the African National Congress [ANC] turn its back on its own struggle history.”
Just because the ANC did not have the idea, did not mean it was not a good one.
Selfe was currently abroad, but would seek an appointment with Mentor on his return in an effort to get her to treat the Bill with the serious consideration it deserved, Davidson said. — Sapa