Chairperson, firstly I want to thank all the parties that have supported the Bill and all the hard work you put into this Bill, once again. It's really important because the hon Groenewald and others pointed it out. This Bill is not a simple Bill; it is about allowing people to intercept our communications.
This is a serious matter. A matter like this you cannot deal with politically. What you have to do is a necessary evil, even what we need in our society, and this party here, the ANC, knows that better than anyone. We were the ones who suffered under the previous regime by people tapping our phone calls and so on.
So, we fully understand the difficulties and the invasion in one's life and one's privacy. And therefore, this Bill, driven by the ANC, must never become a vehicle similarly to use for political undermining of any person or meddling in their private life and so on.
So, it is very important with legislation like this that we get the right balance, that we get the right checks and balances. Therefore, to those people who worry about this legislation, I take you very seriously because I take myself seriously on this piece of legislation.
This is not a Bill that we just want to have lying around and falling into the wrong hands and being utilised by the wrong people.
I also think that the hon Landers has really covered the issue of the length of time that it has taken for us to pass this Bill. You know that this Bill was started at the end of the 1990s. We then started consulting on this Bill. It went to the SA Law Reform Commission.
The Bill reached us for the first time in 2002. We took a whole year to pass the original Act. It took another three years before we implemented the legislation. It then took another intervention from the mobile cellular operators to stop us for nearly another year to implement this amendment.
I really think that we must take the issues raised by Mr Landers very seriously. With regard to the issue of lobbying, we cannot become like the United States of America. You cannot have people in this House on both sides being the direct spokespersons and the mouthpieces of lobbyists on these issues. [Applause.] The effect of that is that we take almost a year to pass a piece of legislation like this.
We must be careful: This legislation does not just allow us to intercept, it also protects us. The first part of this legislation says that we totally prohibit any form of interception which is not approved in this legislation. So, all these private investigators, you talk about, hon Groenewald, are acting illegally. They have no authority at all to tap or intercept anyone's communications.
In terms of this Act - I want the public out there to listen - if these private investigators or anyone else intercepts your information and uses it to pressurise you in negotiations or in business, lay a charge against them. It is illegal, they have committed a crime.
Should any law-enforcement agency - and Mr Groenewald has mentioned some of those examples - in this country say they have intercepted information, where they never went to a judge to get an order to intercept that information, you must go and lay a charge against them. They are acting illegally and this law protects you.
This law has the balance - on the one hand it says to you that you are protected from being intercepted. Any law-abiding citizen hasn't got a problem. Anyone else who wants to intercept must go to the judge and convince the judge. A law-enforcement agency must convince the judge that there is a proper case to have an order issued against them. Now, some of the amendments today are exactly to make that law work properly.
If someone wants to get an order from the judge they can't just go to the judge and say, well, whatever communications Ms Mentor makes we want to intercept it. They must give specifics to the judge, and that explains why we need a registration process.
During the registration process you need to activate these phones. Now, the principal Act we passed originally contained a registration process, but it was a paper-based registration process and quite rightly, on this issue the mobile cellular operators wanted to correct it by arguing that it is too cumbersome; that's the only issue they have been correcting.
On this issue they came to us as government and said that they wanted to create an electronic solution and therefore the issue of cost, hon Joubert, doesn't come into it because it is their suggestion to do that, it is not ours. They came to government and asked us to change this paper-based system.
If we want to make sure that the law-enforcement agencies can do their work, then every person, when they go and buy a SIM card, must go to one of the outlets of MTN, Vodacom or Cell C and activate it. You activate it by giving them your ID number, the number of your phone, the number of your SIM card and your address. It takes one or two minutes.
They just punch the information into it. It is a little gadget like when you activate your credit card. You put the information in and it takes you one or two minutes. I don't know about the suggestion of long queues. It will depend on how many gadgets MTN and Vodacom have. If they have hundreds of them all over the place, everyone will just go and activate. That is why, of course, you need to allow people to register their phones when coming into the country. Otherwise foreigners will not have to register their phones but citizens will have to register their phones. All I do is to drive across the border to Lesotho or Swaziland and go and buy a SIM card and come back, and the police can never catch me. They can never intercept my calls because I can go everywhere in or outside the country and buy the SIM card and I will be free from the registration system.
All we say is that when you are at a port of entry, there will be cubicles and all you have to do is to go and register just like we South Africans do to register our phones. Give your ID or your passport, put in the number and from there on you are registered.
If you don't do that at the airport you can go to any cubicle and do it there. It is such a simple thing. But if you don't do it, then we can scrap the Bill. We can scrap the Bill because all the big criminals will just go outside the country and get the SIM card and come in from outside and evade the registration system. We will never be able to intercept any of their calls. So, who will ever pass a law like that? No country that has some common sense could pass a law like that.
We have got a bit more than half a brain, as is the case with the IFP and that is why we passed the Bill. You, the IFP, you guys are making yourselves meaningless. You can't come to Parliament at this podium and say we have got a whole lot of members in the committee and we have never attended the committee meetings and therefore we are going to oppose the Bill.
Why are the taxpayers paying you? Why do you come to work? This Bill is so important that you wanted to reject it and not use it as a tool against crime. Why do you not attend these meetings? Why do you come to Parliament to reject the Bill?
At least I can take the hon Joubert's criticism about the Bill and deal with it now because he was part of the committee. He knows what he is talking about. I don't have to agree with him, but at least I am arguing with someone who knows something. But, guys, you come here and you have got the temerity to tell us: "We didn't attend the meetings, yet we are not going to deal with this, we are going to reject the Bill." What kind of craziness is that? You will become completely meaningless in the next election. You will only get 1% of the vote, even less than you are getting now. I don't want to take the last money that you have; save that for when you haven't got jobs.
I think we also have to look at the other issues that have been raised. With regard to the 12 months that we have given for people to register their phones, once this Act kicks in and people start registering, you and I register when we buy new phones, we register and we activate them. But now, people who have already got the SIM cards haven't been registered and we have to register them. The longer period we give for people to register their old cards, the longer the system becomes meaningless because I just use the old card if I am a criminal. I don't buy a new card.
So if you start extending this period to 18 months and 36 months, it means for the next three years this Bill will be useless and you won't be able to use the Bill.
So, that is why we have given a one-year period. Obviously, these mobile cellular operators want to make money so they are going to make sure that everybody who wants to use their phones is going to come and register their SIM cards.
I don't know what the fear is or what the problem is. They are going to put up enough kiosks because otherwise they won't make money. They like making money, like any other business. They are going to put up the kiosks and people are going to register. A 12-month period is more than enough time for doing so.
This means that for 12 months there is a loophole in this Act. For 12 months criminals can use the old SIM card. I am telling them now, and they know it. Sometimes the people that are talking on their behalf not to register their SIM cards are actually the only ones making suggestions advantageous to the criminals. The problem is that we will have problems for 12 months, even when we get the system going.
I thank all who supported this legislation. As I said, we try and get that delicate balance in trying to intercept criminals' calls. They are the people who are not doing the right things. But then, the Act protects all the citizens who are good, law-abiding citizens.
We must remember this. When I saw the newspaper article written about this, they never wrote about the part where the Act is protecting us. For the first time in the history of this country it creates that protection for people's communications not to be intercepted arbitrarily. So, once again, thanks to everyone who played a role in preparing this Bill and I unconditionally support it on behalf of the ANC.