Madam Deputy Speaker, it has really been a task and a half. On behalf of the portfolio committee, I think there is nothing much to be said today because we have managed to listen and to engage with the public on the Bill that has been tabled before Parliament.
Let me start by taking this opportunity to outline the manner in which we have handled this Bill and that is that, when the Bill was tabled before Parliament, there were problems already around the constitutionality of the Bill. As we all know, the state law advisor found that there are problems within the Bill on which he could not give a clear report to Parliament on the constitutionality of the Bill with a number of recommendations that he made.
By the time the Bill was tabled before the committee jointly by our Minister and the Deputy Minister of Justice, the portfolio committee did its own assessment of the work and the challenge before the committee. We then decided, after listening to the presentation, that it would be necessary, since this matter is one of the most sensitive matters - because even the court itself found that this matter needs to be handled in a sensitive manner - and we made sure that we moved along with the people in dealing with the matter.
We then decided as a committee that we should embark on a programme of public hearings. It's normal procedure that on any Bill that is before Parliament we have to have public hearings, but we then extended the hearings to go around the country because of our understanding of the nature and the sensitivity of the matter that was before the committee.
The first hearings were held in Soweto where we invited the residents and people generally of Gauteng, who came in their numbers to participate and to engage robustly with Parliament. They raised their concerns around the issues that we were placing before them, and those hearings continued in all the provinces, to cut matters short.
What I want to raise is that during public participation at the public hearings, there were a number of issues that were raised that came out of the public hearings. One of the issues that came out was the issue of amending the Constitution. There was this general call that rejected what we wanted to do as Parliament, especially looking at the Bill itself as something that the public would not accept - that we should solemnise marriages of same-sex couples. Then there was this call to protect the marriage and amend the Constitution so as not to allow these marriages to take place.
The second view that came out of the public hearing was that of holding a referendum. This was simply to say that there is a need to test the will of the majority of the people on what we want to do as government, because this was informed by the notion that says we reject, we don't agree, we don't support what government wants to do, and let us call for a referendum to test the will of the people. That was the view that was coming generally from the public.
The third thing that came out very strongly was that the Bill itself had in it a component that dealt with the issue of a civil union and the issue of domestic partnership. The majority of the people again felt that the issue of domestic partnership interfered with customary marriage and that it interfered generally with any relationship because what it was saying was that, like any relationship that you get into, it may be a registered or non-registered relationship, but automatically you would be covered by the law. Most of the people felt very strongly that it was not necessary for us to engage on that matter, especially a matter which was not quite urgent. We put it aside so that we could begin to engage with the public again.
What was coming across, however, was the fourth point which was the time allocated for Parliament to handle this matter because, generally, the public felt very strongly about the time given to Parliament. The court in its ruling said that it would give Parliament one year to come up with the remedy to deal with this problem. So people felt very strongly that there was a need in fact to have more time so as to allow more debate around the issue before us.
The last point obviously was the usage of the word "marriage" in the Bill. People felt very strongly that, whatever it is that we want to do, we should not use the word ``marriage''. You know that there were a number of organisations and churches that marched to send their memorandums, who sent a number of submissions that were talking about the usage of the word "marriage" itself. Other speakers will come who will address that part as to why we have opted to have ``marriage'' in the Bill. Speakers who will come after me will raise those issues.
So I think, generally, the approach we took as Parliament was to recognise the very fact that whatever we do, we are guided by the Constitution. These rights that we talk about are not rights that are made by the ANC somewhere in the corner there. These rights are the rights that we ourselves, who have participated in compiling this wonderful document that we call the Constitution of South Africa which we all pride ourselves on, entrenched in it. These rights are rights that you cannot take away. That is the manner in which we ourselves approached these public hearings. We explained these rights to the people. In fact, we mostly found that people understand the Constitution better than some of you sitting in the Chamber here.
The biggest challenge facing us is obviously that we have to make sure that we meet the Constitutional Court judgment and, given the manner in which the Minister has elaborated on these issues, we have tried in fact to respond to that Constitutional Court judgment. We have removed the domestic partnership, as the people have said. We have looked at the Bill itself and said that to draft it only for a specific group of people will not be correct. Why can't we widen the scope of this Bill to cover not only same- sex partners but also everyone else? Mncwango, if you want to decide and go to another extension of same-sex marriage, you may. [Interjections.]