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Have your say on the Procurement Bill

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Public comments as delivered to parliament

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STATEMENTS FROM CIVIL ORGANISATIONS

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In the Media

COMMITTEE MEETING Streamed live on Feb 6, 2024
(National Council of Provinces), [Briefing by National Treasury on the Public Procurement Bill [B18B-2023]

Public Affairs Research Institute’s Ryan Brunette explains why there is some dissatisfaction with the new Public Procurement Bill passed by the national assembly to manage how govenrment procures goods.

A group of civil society organisations under the name of the
Procurement Reform Working Group say they believe that the public
procurement bill is flawed – and that major changes need to be made. The bill is currently going through parliament and aims to reform some
of the ways the government procures goods and services. Legal Resources Centre candidate attorney Kristen Abrahams explains further.

African Procurement Law Unit’s oral submissions on the SA Public Procurement Bill 2023. APLU submitted detailed comments on the South African Public Procurement Bill [B18-2023] to Parliament and also appeared before Parliament’s Standing Committee on Finance to highlight the most important aspects of the submissions. This video is a recording of the oral submission.

Memorandum of Objects (Summary)

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Amendments and Repeal of Legislation (Schedule)

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The Public Procurement Bill

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Freedom of Religion SA (FOR SA)

TEMPLATE PROVIDED BY FOR SA

I strongly oppose the Prevention and Combating of Hate Crimes and Hate Speech Bill [B9B – 2018], which I believe to be unconstitutional and unnecessary, for the following reasons:

  1. The Bill violates our constitutional rights as religious persons to express our religious beliefs without fear of punishment or persecution (section 15, read with section 16). Increasingly, around the world but also in South Africa, various holy scriptures (particularly on contentious issues) are regarded as “politically incorrect” or “offensive”, allegedly causing emotional and/or social harm.
  2. I specifically oppose the Bill’s:
    1. wide definition of “harm” (in Clause 1);
    2. the failure to define “hatred” (in Clause 1); and
    3. definition of, and creation of, the crime of “hate speech” (in Clause 4).
  3. The creation of the crime of “hate speech” for saying / distributing something which could possibly be construed as “harmful”, will have certain unintended consequences, namely the criminalisation of good / well-meaning people who will be prosecuted for saying what they sincerely believe (according to their holy texts) and sent to jail.
  4. There are already sufficient existing laws dealing with “hate speech”.
  5. For all of the reasons given, I ask:
    1. For the scrapping of the “hate speech” sections from the Bill altogether;
    2. Alternatively, should the “hate speech” provisions remain part of the Bill, we ask:
      1. That “harm” be defined as: “gross emotional and psychological detriment that objectively and severely undermines the human dignity of the targeted group”; and
      2. That “hatred” be defined as: “strong and deeply-felt emotions of enmity, ill-will, detestation, malevolence and vilification against members of an identifiable group, that implies that members of that group are to be despised, scorned, denied respect and subjected to ill-treatment based on their group affiliation”.
    3. That Clause 4(2)(d) (the “religious exemption clause”) be strengthened as follows to protect:
      “expression of any religious conviction, tenet, belief, teaching, doctrine or writings, by a religious organisation or an individual, in public or in private, to the extent that such expression does not actively support, instigate, exhort, or call for extreme detestation, vilification, enmity, ill-will and malevolence that constitutes incitement to cause gross emotional and psychological harm that severely undermines the dignity of the targeted group, based on race, ethnicity, gender, religion or sexual orientation”.