Chairperson, there was quite an extensive process undertaken by the Portfolio Committee on Justice and Constitutional Development in deciding on names to fill the vacancies in the Human Rights Commission. To recap: The terms of office of four of the five existing full- time members of the Human Rights Commission will be expiring. One member - that is Pregs Govender - will be left and the one part-time member's term is also expiring.
Adverts were placed in the media in April, with the closing date in May. The committee and a number of nominations were received from that. The committee decided to readvertise, as the advert didn't specify that we may want to appoint part-time commissioners. Further adverts were therefore placed in the media closing on 4 September 2009. There were 217 nominations received. We shortlisted 32 and then had interviews from 14 to 17 September. Two nominees withdrew and three more were unavailable. In total we interviewed 27 people.
The quality of the people who were interviewed was very high and the committee was very sorry that it couldn't appoint more people. One part of the committee report reflects the desire that more funding could be found to engage more commissioners. We nevertheless recommended four full-time and two part-time commissioners, whose names are in the ATCs of Friday.
We also felt that it would be very useful if we could use the expertise that we came across during the interviews, and try to encourage a number of those people who were not successful to give technical support on human rights to the Justice committee as we do our work.
In total, after much deliberation, having to consider the whole issue of representivity, the issue of area and distribution, these are the names that the committee came up with.
In response to two of the previous speakers, on the issue around the role of the Human Rights Commission, it is not an NGO; it is there to protect human rights, but part of it is to engage government on that. If you read the Human Rights Commission's report, they have received over 1 000 complaints, which were dealt with without having to write formal reports and come up with findings. For example, people who do not have ID books, people who weren't able to get pensions; and those were done through engagement with government.
Of the 13-odd reports that they have produced since 2002, about 100 have actually been findings against government, and that was during Adv Mushwana's term. I think it's been unfortunate that some of the issues were raised in the interviews, for example, Mr Swart referred to Adv Mpumlwana's comment about not having private lawyers. I think it was misconstrued and misunderstood.
It was in the context of the fact that if you want equality, then you don't really have equality if a richer person can employ a better skilled or better lawyer. It was in that context that he made the comment. As for the comments by Ms Adams, unfortunately she didn't raise them in the hearing. It would have been useful to have put those to Adv Mpumlwana and drawn them to the attention of the committee, rather than making a display in front of the House.
Having said that, I would like to thank everybody who participated in the process, the people who applied and the people who came to the interviews and participated in them - I do so on behalf of the chairperson, who is unable to be here, as he is at the Judicial Service Commission hearings - the members of the committee who had to wade through a lot of papers and a lot of CVs and sit through endless hours of interviews. Therefore, as the ANC, we support the names that have been put forward in the report before the House. Thank you. [Applause.]
Debate concluded.