ADV PRIOR
Thank you Mr Chairman.  Mr Chairman, the preamble to the Promotional of National Unity and Reconciliation Act, I submit lays or indicates the wide scope  that this Committee has in particular, in dealing with amnesty applications in respect of receipt of information.
	In terms of the Commission's work as a whole in investigating gross violations of human rights, the establishment of as complete a picture as possible, of the nature, causes and extent of those violations, is required.  Mr Chairman, it is apt to highlight the fact that the powers conferred upon this particular Committee on amnesty in terms of Section 5 of the Act, allows or allow the Amnesty Committee to set out working procedures and from there, develop practises as to how it would conduct its business.  To that extent, the office or the position of Evidence Leader was not lightly determined.  In fact the support of such a person or office forms an integral part of the work of the Amnesty Committee.  A practice has developed since its inception, that information would be prepared, would be collated and presented to an Amnesty Committee specifically dealing with a particular amnesty application.   To that extent my submission is that the legislature had in its mind, at the time when it drafted or when it pronounced on Section 29, that very situation.   
	My reading of Section 29(5) in particular, I submit, caters for two distinct situations.   The one situation is where the Commission having regard to the principles of openness and transparency may declare such Section 29 evidence, not to be made public as was argued by my learned friend, and as correctly pointed out by the Chairman.  If or in the absence of such determination, that determination being that the evidence or the proceedings should not be made public, if that does not happen, the Act says until the article is produced at a hearing, which is an amnesty hearing in point, and then I don't refer to proceedings in courts of law, they are two disjunctive situations, it is not and or, it is not a condition that the Commission needs to pronounce upon .