Mr Chairman, first and foremost, I would like to apologise for my intermittent attendance of this important debate. I am also participating in the deliberations on the Intellectual Property Amendment Bill.
Preliminarily, I wish to extend a word of appreciation for the wise, cordial and gentleman-like leadership of our chairman, the hon Landers, who has aptly replaced the hon Ramatlhodi. It is a pleasure serving on this Portfolio Committee on Justice and Constitutional Development, which has proven to work in a very constructive manner, irrespective of political affiliations.
Secondly, the core business of this department is to provide justice. The cost of justice, the affordability of justice, the accessibility of justice is one of the greatest challenges confronting us, and it remains a challenge far from being fully addressed. I appreciate that there are constitutional difficulties in that respect, because rightly or wrongly, wisely or unwisely, we have left the reform of the judicial system to the courts themselves in terms of section 173 of the Constitution. But from the IFP's side, we have placed that issue at the forefront of the debate for about 10 years now. The first time, it was done by my leader in Parliament, Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi.
The judicial system itself must be reformed. It is not affordable for the majority of our families who do not qualify for state assistance. It is not affordable for them to even defend themselves in criminal procedures. Civil proceedings and civil litigation is a privilege for the rich. The entire judicial process is antiquated, obsolete. It should be relegated to the age of dinosaurs.
We have made specific proposals for this to be changed. In my five and half minutes I cannot present them to you, but you can read them in the copy of De Rebus, which will be distributed to your pigeonholes in a couple of days, and I urge you to look at them. The same proposals were made to the then Minister Maduna and the Deputy Minister Surty at the time and they were referred to the Rules Board. It is essential that we look at the entire structure of the judicial process. It is the last needed reform.
The second concern that we have - because it is topical and the Minister in his remarks made reference to it today - is the role of the department in being the centre of constitutional protection together with constitutional development. We must protect the Constitution. We are very concerned by the manner in which the term of office of the Chief Justice has been extended. There has been no compliance with section 176 of the Constitution.
We are all in agreement that that extension should have taken place. It was desirable. I do not think that there are any political differences on the necessity of doing so, but it should have been done by an Act of Parliament. It is not good enough to do it because we are all in agreement, and not respect the Constitution in the process.
The third aspect I want to raise in this debate, again, making reference to what I will publish, is the issue of corruption. Corruption is the cancer which will destroy this Republic. There comes a time with corruption when the rule of law is set aside and corruption becomes the rule of law. The breach of law becomes normality. We have received reports from the National Prosecuting Authority, NPA, and the Special Investigating Unit, the SIU, that they cannot deal with the past. There is no possibility of forecasting what can be done in the future. As painful as it may be, and I have argued this and will argue it in a more extensive publication, we must consider the need for an amnesty. We need to draw a line to start afresh and be serious. Let us write off the past 16 years of generalised larceny as the cost of the revolution. It happened, historically.
This has been a bloodless revolution, but we need to turn a new page, otherwise we are going to have a parallel system of power fuelled by corruption, akin to what there is in Russia, which will undermine the democratic system of power which we try to uphold within Parliament. This is an issue that I will be carrying forward in further debates. Thank you, Mr Chairman. I see my time has expired.