MEMORANDUM OF COMMENT BY THE SOUTH AFRICAN CHAMBER OF BUSINESS (SACOB) CONCERNING THE OPEN DEMOCRACY BILL
1.INTRODUCTION
1.1 SACOB through its 90 individual Chambers and 60 Association Members represents some 40 000 businesses. large and small throughout South Africa. Legislation that provides conditions for the disclosure of information by government and private sector bodies is of direct interest to the business sector.
1.2 SACOB has examined the Open Democracy Bill, and is pleased to note that most of the concerns expressed by the private sector in regard to earlier drafts of the Bill, have largely been satisfactorily resolved. SACOB accordingly supports the Bill, subject to certain amendments detailed below.
2. SPECIFIC COMMENT
2.1 Section 55
The provisions of this section disallows personal information to be exchanged between companies of the same group. This will pose considerable and unnecessarily costly administrative difficulties for certain companies engaged in retail credit operations. It is suggested that a sub-section be included so as to permit such access to a common data base.
2.2 Section 86
SACOB believes that the regulations made by the Minister of Justice, in consultation with the Human Rights Commission in terms of this section, will be crucial to the effective operation or otherwise of the proposed Open Democracy Act. The administrative, procedural, logistical and operational efficacy of the Act will largely hinge on the content and quality of the regulations and SACOB strongly believes, and accordingly recommends, that there should be specific provision under this section for the consultative process to be extended to private bodies as well, possibly via representative organisations of such bodies.
While the proposed Section 82 does provide for a large measure of interaction and consultation between the Human Rights Commission and private bodies, we believe that this is not sufficient insofar as the vitally important regulations are concerned, where direct rather than diluted consultation would, in our view, result in more manageable, workable and acceptable regulations.
3. CONCLUSION
We would be grateful for an opportunity to give an oral presentation before the Portfolio and Select Committees, in support of our views.