Hon Chairperson, hon Deputy President, hon Ministers and Deputy Ministers, as stated in the committee, Cope does not go along with the charade that we went through after the letter from the President was presented to this ad hoc committee.
The fact is that the ANC wanted the committee to limit the discussions only to clauses 42 and 45, as their interpretation of the letter from the President states. They immediately suggested that we amend other clauses that reasonably have to be amended due to grammar, punctuation and spelling errors.
The hon Burgess stated the history of this particular committee as if everything was going smoothly. The truth is that the ANC tried to bulldoze everybody in the committee all the time. That's why the Speaker had to send the report back to the committee to correct what should be corrected. The refusal of the ANC to include the minority views in the report clearly shows their attitude towards anything. They believe that the majority must continue to bulldoze everybody, even if it's wrong. It's really unfortunate.
Hon Speaker, the letter from the President raises concerns about the constitutionality and tagging of the Bill. On the other hand the proposed amendments of clauses 42 and 45 deal with crossing the t's and dotting the i's. We don't believe that the noncrossing of the t's and nondotting of the i's on their own could cause the Bill not to pass constitutional muster.
Cope believes that since clauses 42 and 45 in particular are referred to by the President as examples of the use of a phrase that lacks meaning and coherence, the logical thing the committee should have done was to ask for more clarity from the President. The committee's task was limited to dealing only with the clauses referred to by the President. No reasonable legislature can ignore correcting obvious spelling mistakes, hence Cope supported the other technical amendments which were not referred to by the President.
It is interesting that the ANC did not support the proposal to look at the Bill as a whole. To them the President was specific about dealing with clauses 42 and 45. But when it came to other clauses which had errors, they used a different logic and said we must deal with that because we can't allow the Bill to go through with such mistakes, and this was reasonable. But their logic is very problematic, because when it comes to other points that the President did not specify, and if it suits them, they must be dealt with, because it's logical. That's very difficult logic from the ANC.
The ANC knows that this legislation is wrong. They know that this Bill is wrong and they also know that if it was law today the charade we saw in our courts about the Public Protector and the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development would not see the light of day because they would have used this law to try to block the Public Protector from doing her job. Cope believes that the letter of the President gave us an opportunity to review the Bill as a whole, but the ANC used its numbers to bulldoze all the other parties. It is important for voters to understand that not voting will only strengthen the dictatorship of the ANC. The drama involving the Nkandla report, as I have stated, indicates very clearly the operation of the ANC, which is going to bring in a police state by stealth. I thank you.