Chairperson of the House, hon Minister, the MEC, provincial delegates, members of the committee and members, let me take a brief moment to remind you that it was in 1936 that the land legislation displaced African kingdoms, in particular, and blacks in general. It was intended to suppress what colonialists called "rebellious elements" of traditional leadership.
It went on through various tribal wars of resistance, and as the Minister has stated, in terms of the Bambatha Rebellion, towards the formation of the ANC, where these traditional leaders, together with religious and the intellectual leaders of the time, sat down together and agreed that there was a need for an organisation that would unite the Africans, in particular, and blacks in general, against colonialism. This was as a result of the formation of the Union of South Africa on 31 May 1910.
Therefore, what we are bringing here is as a consequence of the history of decades and centuries of the struggle by the African people to restore their dignity. When the ANC was unbanned or even before it was unbanned, in 1986, the legal section of the ANC wrote constitutional guidelines that were geared to defining the role of traditional leadership during the time of taking over power. You would remember that ever since the Union of South Africa was formed the traditional leadership was nowhere. They did not have access to water, roads, clinics or anything, as a result of disputes. They could not even plough because they were given infertile land. In fact, they were chased onto infertile land. Therefore the House will see the passion and the need of this Parliament to restore the dignity of the traditional leadership. [Applause.]
The House will further note that after writing those constitutional guidelines in 1986, with the Harare Declaration it put more pressure on apartheid leaders to go to the negotiations. The Codesa talks did not escape having to talk about the role of traditional leadership and its definition and status; hence, after the Codesa agreement, when the interim Constitution was written in 1993, there was a clause of recognition of the traditional leadership for the first time after 100 years of suppression. What apartheid did in 1948 and the subsequent years was to craft laws that would control and regulate the traditional leadership. The traditional leadership did not have powers other than power with regard to circumcision. For all these other powers, they had to ask permission from the magistrates if they wanted to do something on their own indigenous land.
We are the generation that is taking the bull by the horns because we cannot just say we are free for nothing. We will be free when the traditional system of governance is also free and entrenched in our Constitution and democracy, so that the traditional leadership really play their role as they used to before the colonialist and apartheid government took over power in the country. [Applause.]
It is important that, as we are taking these matters further with the Bill, as the Minister has said, we do not tackle something that is new or has a new agenda. We are correcting legacies of inequality, and we are also restoring dignity.
I know elsewhere we still have a task and, as the Minister said, we are still going to engage. That is why we will call upon traditional leadership not to be reactive. They must also be proactive and write about what they think could be alternative legislation that can restore their dignity, and not just respond to what Parliament suggests for them.
I want to appeal to the House that as we engage within the scope of four years, we also have to engage with what they think is an alternative that will integrate, not what would become an antithesis, but what will become a synthesis of the ideas of Parliament and the ideas of the House of Traditional Leaders.
I think in that way we will be able to restore the traditional leadership system, and they will in a way play their constitutional role. Remember, they are the umbilical cord of the traditional community and, therefore, there is no way in which they live parallel to the people.
If the needs of the people can be entrenched in the needs of the traditional leadership, then development will be simple because there will be no quarrel if a road has to pass through somewhere. There will be no quarrel if a pipe has to pass through somewhere or when the municipality extends sites for settlement because this entire process will be done in a systematic and integrated manner.
I think we would have a vision wherein the same Integrated Development Plan that we are talking about would be an integrated development plan that has a blueprint of the ideas of the traditional leadership.
The only way is by passing this Bill, and no other way. Therefore, the House should take this Bill seriously. The process of engagement is really involving us in the sense that, as members of the committee, we have learnt what the needs of traditional leadership are; equally, traditional leadership has learnt about the legal implications of certain things, and they had to accept the views of Parliament.
We want to congratulate the two Houses, the provincial House and the national House, on the manner in which they engaged in the process leading up to the arrival of these two Bills. We need to congratulate them on that.
The process indeed started on 25 August, when the committee was briefed. After being briefed on the second Bill, the department came with clarities and then permanent delegates of provinces were allowed to go back to their provinces to allow their provincial legislature to run, to hit the ground running in terms of public hearings.
This is the process of consultation. The Bill was widely consulted upon. Consultation does not necessarily mean agreement; consultation means engaging on views and, therefore, what is the consensus would be inscribed into the Bill that will become an Act, which the other House will be passing. We had a meeting again that was in terms of the Mandating Procedures of Provinces Act.
In that forum that is where, indeed, we have seen how vibrant democracy is; that's where you would see how permanent delegates and their provinces are serious about this aspect of the Bill. It does not necessarily mean that they would just agree. There were worrying issues, but at the end of the day permanent delegates of provinces had mandates in all nine provinces on major aspects of the Traditional Leadership and Governance Framework Bill.
As we talk now, the aspects of the amendments that are in the Bill are all agreed upon, as proposed amendments that will enhance the dignity of the house. The object of the Bills, especially the National House of Traditional Leaders Bill, is primarily really to restore the dignity of traditional leadership as a custodian of African custom and heritage, to transform its institutions so that they may be able to play their democratic role in the country.
The other Bill, as a framework, seeks to put in place all the structures that were absent to close the gaps and the inefficiencies that the current legislation provides. I therefore move without question that you adopt these Bills as progress in the House. [Time expired.] [Applause.]