NEW MPUMALANGA TOURISM LEGISLATION

Abstract

Tourism is one of the functional areas of concurrent national and provincial legislative competence listed in Schedule 4 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996. This means that the provincial legislatures have the power to pass legislation with regard to that matter (ss 43(b) and 104(1)(b)(i) of the Constitution). In contrast to most other provinces (see Vrancken “The Provincial Tourism Legislation” 2000 3 TSAR 506), the Mpumalanga province refrained from making use of that power for a relatively long period of time. It then took more than a year for the Premier to assent to the Mpumalanga Tourism Bill, 2001 (PG 920 of 2003-02-07), only
for the Premier to assent, within three years, to its successor: the Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Agency Act 5 of 2005 (PG 1319 of 2006-03-17). The purpose of this note is to compare this new piece of legislation, which came into effect on 1 April 2006 (PG 1325 of 2006-03-24), with its predecessor as well as with legislation recently brought into force in other provinces.