Editorial: Amend the Act not Bill

By Mashilo Mnisi (BtM Editor)

September 22, 2006: Public hearings on a Civil Unions Bill in this land – South Africa, are boisterously roaming the different provinces, and then what!

The Constitutional Court had last year mandated parliament to amend the existing Marriage Act (that blatantly leaves out homosexual couples), which is something imperative that needs to be done. Just to remind some, the Constitutional Court is the supreme court of law in South Africa.

It’s sometimes repugnant and appalling for other government departments to just ignore what the Constitutional Court reckoned and instructed.

One instance of those departments is the department of Home Affairs, and therefore one wonders about these public hearings if they could bring about any input or change, while same issues of homophobia are being raised, and while some people are using the bible and the African traditions and ideologies to justify their points shunning the fact that some of the deserved people are living in secular worlds and very liberal.

Definitely the hearings on the bill will be over and the Home Affairs department’s portfolio committee will still face the task to amend the Marriage Act not the ‘Civil Unions Act’.