Chair, hon Minister, hon members, the ANC lives, the ANC leads, and I can further add that the ANC cares. It does so because this Bill seeks to address the welfare of persons who made sacrifices or served the public interest to establish a nonracial and democratic constitutional order. As already mentioned by former speakers and colleagues, the target groups for these amendments are people who did not qualify to apply for special pensions due to age limits.
Age has been a major bone of contention because it discriminated against freedom fighters that swelled the ranks of the liberation armies in the mid 1970s and 1980s. As was stated by many presenters who came before the committee during public hearings, the liberation struggle knew no age. A number of ex-combatants responded to the call not to submit but to fight, when they were generally younger.
It was reported during these hearings that the youngest MK freedom fighters were found in the Young Lions detachment. The Azanian People's Liberation Army, or Apla, also claimed that some of its combatants were as young as nine years old when they joined the army in exile. It was mainly the young who heeded the call by President O R Tambo in January 1985 to render South Africa ungovernable and the apartheid system unworkable. Though very small in numbers the majority of the Young Lions detachment will be left out in the cold as far as this amendment is concerned, hence the committee resolution as tabled in the committee report.
The difficulty that will be faced by the special pensions' administration is the verification of the would-be beneficiaries. Veterans' organisations themselves acknowledge this challenge. There was a proposal by the MK Veterans' Association that to minimise the problem, perhaps the definition should be narrowed down to ex-combatants, because it was not everybody in exile who was in the trenches. It is therefore incumbent on us as well to ensure that those who do not qualify do not loot the system to the disadvantage of the widows and orphans who might be destitute if it were not for this relief.
In the previous Bill the widow of an ex-combatant had only 12 months after the death of their spouse to apply. In this amendment the period has been extend to 36 months. Furthermore, those widows who only got a lump sum payment after the death of their spouse can now get 50% of their spouses' pension, like any other pension fund. A qualifying spouse or orphan will be entitled to receive these benefits on application, and if the application is approved, from the date on which the application was made.
Furthermore, this Bill seeks to decriminalise ... Schedule 1 of the Criminal Procedures Act, as it was the committee's view that these offences were minor. Since a beneficiary or an ex-combatant might be discriminated against, even in a case of theft, the committee therefore said that these were minor offences and so Schedule 1 was done away with. In conclusion, let me say that many of the ex-combatants are in dire straits and are struggling to make ends meet. Some have already passed on and we had to request donations in order to bury them. This is uncomfortable for some of us. We hope that the funeral benefits made available to beneficiaries will go a long way to alleviate the embarrassment and difficulties faced by veterans' organisations and families of these heroes. I thank you. [Applause.]