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Public comments as delivered to parliament

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STATEMENTS FROM OTHERS

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Amendments proposed in the Bill

    • Amend the Companies Act, 2008, so as to change the definition of ‘securities’;
    • Clarify when a Notice of Amendment of a Memorandum of Incorporation takes effect;
    • Differentiate where the right to gain access to companies’ records may be limited;
    • Provide for the preparation, presentation and voting on companies’ remuneration policy and directors’ remuneration report;
    • Provide for the filing of a copy of the annual financial statement;
    • Empower the court to validate the irregular creation, allotment or issue of shares;
    • Clarify how shares which are not fully paid are to be dealt with;
    • Exclude the subsidiary company from the requirements relating to financial assistance;
    • Provide for instances where a special resolution is required for acquisition of shares by the company;
    • Extend the definition of an employee share scheme to include situations where there are purchases of shares of a company;
    • Provide for the circumstances under which a private company will be a regulated company;
    • Deal with the composition of the social and ethics committee;
    • Provide for the publication of the application for exemption from the requirement to appoint a social and ethics committee;
    • Provide for the presentation of the social and ethics committee report at the annual general meeting or shareholders’ meeting as the case may be;
    • Ensure the differentiation of duties between the chairperson of the Companies Tribunal and the Chief Operating Officer; and
    • Provide for matters connected therewith.

The Companies Second Amendment Bill seeks to:

    • Amend the Companies Act, 2008, so as to amend the time bars, in respect of proceedings to recover any loss, damages or costs for which a person may be held liable in terms of section 77 of the Companies Act;
    • Amend the time bar for the bringing of an application to declare a person delinquent in terms of section 162(2) and (3) of the Companies Act; and
    • Provide for matters connected therewith.

In the Media

Companies Amendment Bill 

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Companies Second Amendment 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”.