Date: 14/09/2010
Source: The Democratic Alliance
Title: DA: Farrow: Extract of speech by DA Member of Parliament, on transport, National Assembly, Cape Town

The Bill before us repeals some 51 Acts and 14 Acts that required repealing of certain provisions. Only the Acts for repeal were identified in terms of the South African Law Commission's (SALC) mandate to revise the South African Statute Book with a view to recommending, in conjunction with the Department of Transport, for repeal or amendment those legislations or provisions that are inconsistent with the Equality clause in the Constitution and that are either redundant or obsolete. Many of these old laws also had connotations of the old apartheid regime and were identified as no longer having legal effect. The task could not have been all that easy considering that some of the Acts go back to 1914 and are not readily available electronically. In many cases the older Acts had to be sourced from Parliamentary archives. The Portfolio Committee to a certain degree had similar problems as "taking the word" of officials for some of the Acts was clearly not the correct way to do diligent oversight. Coupled to this was the limited response to the Public Hearings and comment since the gazetting of the Bill some months previously. The only real comments and submissions came from Transnet and their subsequent interaction with the Portfolio Committee led to 4 Railway Construction Acts previously being considered for repeal being excluded.

The reason for their exclusion was that these acts still had disposing rights for a varying period from 2011 to 2016. Under the circumstances, it was decided that these Acts should therefore run their course and as they expired, repeal them.

One of the concerns the DA has was that we may be doing away with Acts which could in many ways help in administrating our Transport better. For instance one of our Acts previously repealed could ensure better control and movement of goods now going by rail. Although this specific Act does not appear in this Repeal Bill, our research now suggests that we should reconsider this Act and to this end the DA will be submitting a Private Members Bill to re-introduce applicable provisions in the Road Transportation Act 74, 1977.

The impact of the movement of heavy freight such as coal, iron-ore, steel, timber and similar bulk products by road has had devastating effects on our roads and the time has come for this practice to be properly policed. We are not saying that we want to introduce the authoritarian and dictatorial practices of the past, through the old Railway Police, but certain provisions in this Act did help in preservation of our road network by ensuring that the road freighters had to first pass the scrutiny of a Transport Board and have a permit issued only if it met certain criteria.

The DA has in previous debates appealed to this Minister and his predecessors to introduce such a Bill or Regulation for certain goods to go by rail but has so far fallen on deaf ears.

I trust that support will be given for this initiative when this Private Members Bill is introduced to Parliament.

This aside, the DA supports the Transport Laws Repeal Bill.