Despite assurances made by the National Assembly speaker that laws abolishing the Scorpions would be passed by Parliament by June, it looks as though the crime-fighting unit is going to have a few more months to live.
The two Bills that together remove the Directorate of Special Operations from the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) and put it under the wing of the South African Police Service (SAPS) did squeak into Parliament before the June 2 deadline set to ensure passage of all legislation before MPs goes away for Christmas, but no committee hearings have so far been set for them.
The justice and constitutional affairs committee (which is responsible for the NPA Bill) wants to get together with the safety and security committee (which will look after the SAPS Bill), but has not yet managed to do so.
The former committee has scheduled meetings on the Bill but not until August, when members return from their winter constituency break. The latter committee has not so far scheduled any meetings on its Bill.
At present no plenary session of the National Assembly has been scheduled until September 15, so even if the committees were able to hasten their work, the Bills could not pass the Assembly until after then. And that would still leave the National Council of Provinces another six weeks to accomplish its cycle of committee meetings and seeking provincial mandates.
Speaker Baleka Mbete expressed disquiet on Thursday about the long gap without plenary meetings, and the programming whips have agreed that there will be at least some plenaries before then. — I-Net Bridge