Saga chairperson Jack Devnarain slams Ramaphosa for being ‘forced’ to send Bills to ConCourt

The South African Guild of Actors (Saga) has welcomed President Cyril Ramaphosa’s referral of the Copyright Amendment Bill and Performers’ Protection Amendment Bill to the Constitutional Court for a ruling on their constitutionality.

But the Saga chairperson was searing in his assessment of Ramaphosa’s stalling.

“It’s a very positive move that the president has now exercised his option to forward the Bills to the Constitutional Court,” Chairperson of Saga Jack Devnarain told The Citizen.

On Tuesday, the Presidency released a statement saying that the Ramaphosa has referred the two Bills for a ruling on their constitutionality to the ConCourt.

The Performers’ Protection Amendment Bill (PPAB), which could dramatically change the livelihoods of actors, has been stationed on Ramaphosa’s desk having gone through the National Assembly and the National Council of Provinces. It only needs Ramaphosa’s signature to be passed.

The PPAB is linked to the Copyright Amendment Bill (CAB).

The PPAB awards actors the statutory right to actor royalties, and the CAB gives the statutory right to form an organisation that can collect and disburse those royalties.

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Ramaphosa pushed by Blind SA

The president’s was forced by SECTION27, who represented Blind SA, in an urgent application in the Constitutional Court against Ramaphosa for failing to sign the CAB.

“It’s taken Blind SA and their desire to force the president to actually do his job by going to the Constitutional Court and going to demand that he needs to act on what his duties are as president,” said Devnarain.

In 2022, the Constitutional Court declared the Copyright Act unconstitutional to the extent that it limited access to reading materials for persons who are blind and visually impaired.

In particular, the Act required persons who are blind or visually impaired to obtain the consent of the copyright holder before being able to convert books and other published works into formats they can read, such as braille or large print.

Devnarain was scathing in his assessment of the president’s inaction.

“That seems to be the only way to get him to perform his mandated duties. Apart from that, he is quite happy to just leave things as they are and not to interfere and not to offer any kind of assistance, much less to provide any kind of leadership.”

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Bills process

The National Assembly signed the two Bills and approved them for the first time in March of 2019. For the second time that happened in 2024 and in both instances the president received the Bills and sat on them.

“In fact he sat with them and did nothing. For the first time he sat with them for 15 months and then only remitted them to the National Assembly with his constitutional questions, in June of 2020 which was a massive waste of time and again it’s taken all this time from the 29th of February 2024 up until now, before he could decide whether he was going to sign it or not,” Devnarain said.

“We are actually quite relieved that the president is not going to make a decision on it because we were certainly not expecting him to do that. We believe that if he was going to make a decision on it, he would’ve done so a long time ago.”

The Presidency did not clearly state what Ramaphosa’s concerns about the two Bills are. Saga said it also doesn’t know what the president’s constitutional questions are.

“We are aware of the time that the president wishes to lodge the papers with the Constitutional Court, then we’ll understand because there will have to be very clearly defined in terms of what his constitutional reservations are,” said Devnarain.

The Citizen reached out to The Presidency about Ramaphosa’s concerns about the two Bills and is yet to receive a response.

The actor, who is still recognised as his character Rajesh Kumar on Isidingo, said whatever issues that the president wishes to raise in the ConCourt can only be related to the constitutionally related questions that came up in the first instance he raised them when he remitted the Bill to the National Assembly in 2020.

“So, now he can’t come up with new constitutional questions because whatever reservations he had in 2020 were dually worked on by Parliament over the intervening four years,” said the actor.

Devnarain isn’t sure how long the process will take. “Certainly these processes work themselves through the constitutional court system of months and possibly even years.”

“Now that he’s brought it to the Constitutional Court, there is going to be a fair adjudication of the Bills and their contents, by the end of it there will be some certainty.”

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Ramaphosa not moved

When The Citizen asked Devnarain if he thought the recent deaths of celebrated actors such as Connie Chiume and Darlington Michaels prompted the president’s move, Devnarain said Ramaphosa isn’t moved by the actors’ demise.

“He has never made any comment [in relation to the Bills] or expressed any sense of loss,” he said.

“He said nothing on the death of Connie Chiume, he said nothing on the death of Darlington Michaels, on the death of Sello Motloung, on the death of Timmy Kwebulana and in fact the president has said nothing in any of his state of the nation addresses.”

“The president doesn’t seem to recognise that these are proud South Africans who carry the weight of our heritage and our ability to tell South African stories.”

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