DA questions whereabouts of bill
The Community Safety Bill was submitted to the former former speaker four months ago.
WHAT has happened to the KwaZulu-Natal Community Safety Bill?
The Democratic Alliance (DA) submitted the bill to the office of KwaZulu-Natal’s Legislature Speaker on June 4. Now Sizwe Mchunu, the leader of the DA in the KwaZulu-Natal Legislature, is calling on the newly elected speaker, Lydia Johnson, to clarify what has happened to it. Mr Mchunu is also the province’s DA spokesman of community safety.
“It has been four months since the bill, which seeks to make KwaZulu-Natal a safer place, was submitted to former Speaker, Peggy Nkonyeni. Despite its significance, there has been no feedback whatsoever,” he said.
This bill was precisely what KwaZulu-Natal needed, he said. It came at a time when many communities were under siege. It also came after a spate of public complaints over police conduct and while the official number of serious conduct-related allegations against SAPS members continued to grow.
“Earlier this month, the Independent Police Investigative Unit (IPID) announced that the number of criminal and brutality cases – which include incompetence, corruption, fraud, bullying and major criminal activities such as assault and murder – against KwaZulu-Natal police officers increased by 60 percent during the current financial year.” he pointed out.
The DA believed this could be put down to poor oversight and management at senior levels, Mr Mchunu added.
The KwaZulu-Natal Community Safety Bill seeks to make the police more accountable to the safety needs of communities and to increase the amount of support and resources that community safety organisations can receive from the provincial Safety Department. It also provides for a provincial police ombudsman with the ability to investigate complaints of police inefficiency or distrust in communities.
If it is passed, this legislation will empower the province’s safety MEC to demand mandatory reports from the Provincial Police Commissioner on deaths caused by police activity, all criminal cases being investigated and convictions achieved, firearms lost or any other matter relating to the efficiency of the police’s relationship with communities
It will also give the provincial cabinet the ability to summon the Provincial Police Commissioner to appear before them and to hold that person accountable for non-performance.
“When the DA presented the Bill to the speaker, we pointed out the recent Constitutional Court ruling on Private Members Bills, which allows opposition parties the right to propose new laws directly to Parliament and all legislatures for voting and consideration. We called on the speaker to amend the rules of the KwaZulu-Natal Legislature in line with this ruling, to prevent ANC-stacked committees from blocking new laws tabled by the opposition,” Mr Mchunu said.
However, the DA is still to hear from the Speaker’s Office in this regard.
The Community Safety Bill was signed into law in the DA-led Western Cape in April 2013.
“There is no good reason why it should not be implemented in KwaZulu-Natal,” Mr Mchunu said.
The DA expected Ms Johnson to advise on what had become of the Bill and to commit to ensuring that it was tabled without delay, he added.
