Hon House Chairperson, unlike the Legal Aid Bill, I think this is just one Bill that even if I were present in the committee on mandate from the EFF, I would not have supported because it has nothing to do with the poor. For me, it is one of those things that are a perpetuation of justice for the rich. It is an interim measure, because we are waiting for the final Bill, the Legal Practice Bill, which has taken 12 years to finalise. It took 12 years for the ruling party to negotiate a change to such an important piece of legislation and it is still not final, and because it is not final, we now have interim measures to amend a 1979 Bill.
The research yielded by the Wits Centre for Applied Legal Studies, together with the Foundation for Human Rights, speaks a lot to this issue, because according to them the statistics of the Law Society of South Africa are as follows: 64% White, 36% Black; 37% female, of whom 13% are African. So maybe this piecemeal transformation that is really not getting up and going is explained by the fact that we haven't changed demographics when it comes to the Law Society of South Africa.
This Bill that we are changing, we were told, has been talking about the TBVC lawyers up to now - 2014 - but we were not told the deeper truth. It is not just semantics. If you engaged those lawyers that trained in those TBVC states, which they didn't create, they just found themselves there, they will tell you how they have been experiencing discrimination in terms of being brought into mainstream law societies. So it is just not semantics.
However, for me, another thing about it is, after 12 years of negotiation, who is really in power? We often come here and argue that the ruling party is not in power and they say, no they are. Twelve years to change a legal law? Maybe it explains why there has been so much racial profiling in the legal fraternity.
People argue that we are, as South Africans, where African Americans were in the 60s and that 10 years from now the fruit will tell. This profiling and criminalisation of the African male has happened precisely because there has been no transformation. We are guiding legal issues by means of a 1979 piece of legislation and an hon member has the guts to ask me: What is wrong with legislating with apartheid legislation? So why does the ruling party come here and lambast apartheid all the time if there is nothing wrong with using its laws to govern current society? [Interjections.] Our argument is: Deal with the actual Bill that took 12 years to finalise. We don't need interim measures for another interim Bill that is in itself racist. [Interjections.]
Therefore, as the EFF, we stand here and we say we do not support this interim measure. Let the other Bill be finalised and put into effect. Thank you. [Interjections.] [Applause.]