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Cape Town – Funny people, South Africans. They have known for months that they have to register their cellphones under the phone tapping law and the deadline is fast approaching.
If they haven't registered by midnight on December 31 this year their phones will suddenly go dead. Not really the best of times to lose connectivity just as you want to wish everybody a happy new year. An incomprehensible TV advertisement has been attempting to drive this message home, but even so (or perhaps as a result) millions of people have still not bothered to register.
Now as a result of representations from the cellphone industry to Justice Minister Jeff Radebe, a one-line bill is being rushed through parliament that will extend the deadline by six months.
If MPs of both houses can get their act together, the statutory deadline will be pushed back to June 30 2011, and cellphone users can revert to their normal institutional torpor until, of course, June 29.
With only two weeks left of this parliamentary session, an appeal was made on Thursday at the National Assembly programme committee for the Regulation of Interception of Communications Amendment Bill to be given especial dispatch.
The deadline for the introduction of legislation to be passed this year in fact expired on July 19.
