Chairperson, hon members, we are all aware that our country has many riches. These riches include our biodiversity, our natural resources and our remarkable inheritance of indigenous knowledge. This knowledge has been passed down to people over years and centuries, and provides us with a glimpse into our history and into the way our people lived and worked, how they struggled and battled, how they overcame obstacles, how they danced, sang, celebrated and mourned. It is our richest inheritance. Our people own this knowledge, as did their forefathers and -mothers. It is precious and must be protected.
This Bill before the House confers the right of ownership on our indigenous communities to benefit from this inheritance. In this regard, the Bill is overdue and very necessary.
During the course of our debate in committee on the details of the Bill, the ANC tried never to lose sight of this objective and what we are aiming to do - to confer this protection on South African indigenous communities in an ever-changing world, where the holders of indigenous knowledge have been disinherited of their birthright. Part of the reason for this disinheritance is, ironically, the fact that many people and communities in the world recognise the value of our intrinsic assets.
A beautiful song, a lovely design and a unique and compelling story all represent the creativity of the minds of our ancestors, and all have value. These assets have been open to exploitation by others because those others recognise their value. Some have appropriated our assets and benefitted from them. This trend has to be arrested. These assets and their value must be acknowledged by our country and by the international community.
Think of the generations of Ndebele people who walked miles and miles to find white chalk in the Boskop area, among others, and the red sand in the rivers nearby to mix their paints and paint their houses. Think of the designs they created, each with a name, carefully painted with feathers they had plucked, each house adorned with a special design - designs that have survived to this day. This is what we need to protect!
So why do we choose to protect our indigenous knowledge in this manner, through an amendment to the current intellectual property law framework? Why do we do that? We do so because we recognise the value of our indigenous knowledge. We do so because we believe that the benefit associated with our national assets should accrue to the communities who conceived of them. We do so because we believe that our people's creativity should be no less protected and no less valued than the intellectual property which we have already protected in our law.
It must be said that we received the legislation in a form that our committee found to be unsatisfactory. We therefore took the decision as a committee to redraft the Bill, and I might add that at that stage this approach had the backing of all the political parties who were present. They seem to have changed their minds.
We redrafted the Bill so as to give it better structure and make it more coherent and less ambiguous regarding the protection of our indigenous knowledge. In the redrafting we took into account all the submissions made to the committee, including that by the National Economic Development and Labour Council, Nedlac, among others, and worked those comments into the new Bill. The hon Harris has made the assertion that there should have been further hearings, but that does not take this fact into account and would simply have been duplication.
The restructuring, then, was based on the premise that the four relevant principal Acts, which have been mentioned here - the Performers' Protection Act, the Copyright Act, the Trade Marks Act and the Design Act - should each include a separate section which granted intellectual property rights to indigenous knowledge. The structure of this piece of legislation, therefore, repeats the key sections and clauses in each of the four Acts mentioned to add what is now being termed a "new species of intellectual property" - indigenous knowledge. This is called a "hybrid approach".
We did this because we wished to demonstrate the high importance we place on the equality of indigenous lore in our law. I say this mindful of the fact that we are, in fact, breaking new ground. We are writing our future history. We are entering unchartered waters in intellectual property and in the protection of indigenous knowledge.
We have been informed by the World Intellectual Property Organisation, Wipo, as it is known, that they are watching our efforts. We know that there is an international debate on this very subject, as has been mentioned, but international agreement has not yet been reached. Agreement has not been reached precisely for the reasons that we grappled with and because different nations have different views on the issue.
In a sense, our legislation is therefore ground-breaking. It seeks to give voice to the traditional in a modern world. It seeks to elevate the creativity of the minds of our indigenous communities to a status equal to modern creativity. It is not an easy task, but it is what we seek for our indigenous assets. There has been similar protection enacted in South Africa before - in 2005. The Minister referred to the Patents Act, which was amended to recognise indigenous knowledge. This has been used in protecting indigenous genetic and biological resources. Despite what Mr Harris says, this petition does exist and does work. So, it is not new in that sense, but is groundbreaking in the sense that the four principal Acts that are being amended here did not previously include indigenous knowledge.
Our committee has stated unequivocally that this is merely the beginning of the process. It is the start that we need to make in order to protect the assets of our community. We are aware that more protection might be necessary in future. The world and the intellectual property environment are constantly changing and developing as progress is made. While we have made a start, we know that we will have to do more in the future.
The challengers of this Bill should remember these things and in making their decision should bear in mind what we are trying to do and who will benefit from the passage of this Bill. The beneficiaries will be the very communities and individuals whose creativity forms the basis of our multilayered culture.
I submit that the challenge about constitutionality is spurious. On this issue, and others raised by committee members, the committee sought and received legal opinion. On the strength of those opinions we satisfied ourselves that the Bill is in compliance with the Constitution and has also been certified by the Office of the State Law Adviser, who was present throughout the deliberations. In fact, the Bill furthers the aims of the Constitution in protecting the rights of our citizens and their cultures and heritages.
The ANC is convinced that this is an important first step in our law to protect indigenous knowledge. All of us on the committee have learnt a lot about intellectual property and the complexity of the issues pertaining to intellectual property.
We greatly value the high-level contributions made by all those who participated in the public hearings and by the expert panel who advised our committee. We have also been ably supported by a team of legal advisors, including the Parliamentary Legal Adviser, Advocate Charmaine van der Merwe - no relation - who, with her sharp mind and dedication to her task, played a pivotal role in the process.
In the end, we as Members of Parliament and representatives of our people have to weigh up what we have learned and apply this in the best interest of our communities. I think we have done this, while acknowledging that more will come as the international community deliberates on these issues and as we as South Africans develop and refine our intellectual property legislative framework. Our best intentions, as the hon Oriani-Ambrosini said, are indeed reflected in this Bill and they will, after its passage, be effected to the benefit of those who have been disinherited of their rights up until now.
The ANC supports this Bill and all that it represents for our people.