House Chair, if a department that is supposed to be administering Acts of Parliament doesn't quite know how many such Acts are in force, then what about us in Parliament who are supposed to conduct oversight?
Members of this House, I understand, have never been given a full list of Acts administered by different departments. This defect needs to be remedied and the Speaker should order all departments to oblige, otherwise we will be operating in the dark. The Transport Laws Repeal Bill reveals to us why this is so important.
As Parliament, we are forever engaged in making new laws because changing circumstances overtake laws that were made in the past. Yet we allow laws that are spent or have no practical utility or legal effect to stay on. Inasmuch as we make laws, we should, on a regular basis, repeal laws that are spent or laws that impede our society from making progress.
Laws are good when they are current and progressive. Laws are bad when they hark back to a previous time and previous order, and stand in the way of change and innovations. Who knows what greater progress we could have made if we had only removed laws that are now obstacles in the path of progress? The Department of Transport must, therefore, be commended for its spring- cleaning and removal from the Statute Book of laws which are ghosts from the past. We also need to be doing our own ghost busting.
According to the SA Law Commission, South Africa has 2 800 Acts on its Statute Book. The Department of Transport was supposed to be administering 218 of these Acts. However, 51 of these 218 Acts, which is a staggering 23,5%, will now be repealed after today. That is an alarming statistic. What if every department is sitting with laws, 20% of which are obsolete? On top of that, another 14 Acts will be pruned, with certain provisions in them being excised. The slimmer versions will make these laws more modern.
This exercise should be an eye-opener to all of us. There is a lot of clutter on our Statute Book that must be removed. We have made a beginning, and Cope requests that a full-scale cleanup in all departments be made. I wish to submit that 2 000 Acts of Parliament will certainly be far better than 2 800. The fact that 16 years have passed since the birth of our democracy must indicate to us the urgency of properly cleaning up our laws. There are also many ordinances in the provincial legislatures that continue to live when they should have been remade into Acts of provincial parliaments long ago. The Land Use Planning Ordinance, Lupo, is one such ordinance.
A huge nightmare for our democracy, however, lies in the regulations that accompany Acts of Parliament. While the cleaning up of the statutes is a big step in the right direction, the regulations should never be left in limbo. For ordinary citizens, it is the obscure regulations which are the bane of their lives.
It is interesting to note that certain Acts have had a 50-year lifespan and are being left out of the process we are engaged in to run their course within the next six years. While this is perhaps the best option, all things considered, government needs to be proactive in determining whether any loopholes will arise come 2016 that would be detrimental to the state, and take timely action.
The handover should be thoroughly prepared for, and also to prevent there being any loopholes that would enable departmental officials to defraud the state through collusion. Cope will, however, support the Transport Laws Repeal Bill. [Time expired.] [Applause.]