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Have your say on the Convicted Offender Bill

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Minister Ronald Lamola confirmed that 96,875 convicted “Schedule 8” offenders, have been released on parole since 2016 without their DNA sample being taken and recorded.

Schedule 8 offences includes murder, rape and sexual offences against children. These are the most violent criminals in our society.

This is due to the failure of the Minister of Police, Bheki Cele to bring the Convicted Offender Amendment Bill (CO Bill) to Parliament.

The aim of this bill is ensure that a DNA sample is taken from convicted schedule 8 offenders and added to the convicted offenders database before they are released on parole.

History of the CO Bill

The problem started when the transitional provision of the Criminal Law (Forensic Procedures) Amendment Act No 37 of 2013, expired in 2017. This provision placed the responsibility of collecting the DNA samples of schedule 8 offenders in the hands of SAPS. Once the transitional provision ran its course, collecting DNA samples was no longer a compulsory requirement resulting in almost one hundred thousand violent criminals being let off the hook.

The CO Bill was drafted in 2016 specifically to compel the collection and logging of DNA samples before convicted criminals become eligible for parole, which would have a huge impact on the prosecution of serious crime in South Africa.

The sole reason this Bill has not been passed into law is that the Ministers of Police, Bheki Cele, and Home Affairs, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, have a highly unconstitutional pipedream of a national DNA population database. In the meantime, convicted murderers and rapists are free to continue their terror sprees in the knowledge that the DNA they might inadvertently leave at crime scenes would not be traced back to them or their last crimes

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Cape Independence Advocacy Group

Dear Speaker,

I am writing to you on behalf of the Cape Independence Advocacy Group (CIAG) and the seventy thousand South Africans who actively follow our work.

We wish to comment on the ‘Electoral Commissions Amendment Act, 2021’, which is proposed by the Democratic Alliance (DA) and was published in the Government Gazette on 21 June 2021.

Given our mandate, our comments are made in the context of the Western Cape, although we appreciate and respect that the constitutional rights enacted through this bill will rightfully apply to all provinces.

This bill is essential to restoring some degree of functional democracy to the voters of the Western Cape and we therefore unreservedly and wholeheartedly endorse it.

Through their voting behaviour, Western Cape voters have made it abundantly clear that they do not endorse many of the policy and ideological positions of the South African national government, but are left utterly powerless to resist them because the voters in other South African provinces, who greatly outnumber them, hold starkly different ideological and political opinions.

In terms of seeing their democratic will enacted, for the majority of Western Cape voters, the democratic era has not offered much of an improvement over the apartheid era. It is a statistical fact that, since 1994, the majority of Western Cape voters have never been governed by the political party they voted for, and they have no foreseeable prospect of ever being governed by the party they vote for. As such, they cannot be said to have functional democracy.

One of the few glimmers of democratic hope Western Cape voters do have, is the provision of Clause 127(2)(f) of the national constitution, and 37(2)(f) of the Western Cape constitution, which allows them, at the discretion of the premier who they elected, to have their voices heard on matters which are important to them, without being drowned out by a national majority who fundamentally hold different views.

To deny Western Cape voters this constitutional right would be a very serious infringement of their political rights and freedoms, and would be a clear indication that parliament and the national government are not interested in the constitutional rights and democratic wishes of Western Cape voters.

We therefore call upon parliament to pass this bill at the earliest opportunity, and without objection.

Yours Faithfully

Phil Craig
(On behalf of the Cape Independence Advocacy Group)