Action SA’s Seton aims for ‘MP Fixit’
KNYSNA - Action SA representative in Knysna, Julie Seton, has made the "cabinet" of Action SA as part of its Team Fix South Africa.
Seton, a former DA councillor in Knysna, will fill the portfolio for justice and correctional services, Action SA president Herman Mashaba announced on Monday 11 March when revealing the party's candidate list for the elections in May.
Mashaba announced 20 portfolios for a streamlined executive for the party.
Seton holds an LLB from the University of South Africa and a National Certificate in municipal financial management from Stellenbosch University. She also served as the director of the Legal Aid Clinic at the University of the Free State before being admitted as an Advocate of the High Court in 1997. She later established and ran her own legal practice.
"Seton knows our justice system intimately and knows what needs to be done to fix it," Mashaba said.
In addition to practising law, she served Knysna as a PR councillor for the DA and as speaker until September 2022, and thereafter as councillor, until her resignation on 1 June 2023.
Will fix it
During her acceptance speech she said, "We are going to fix the justice system in South Africa, uphold the rule of law and restore law and order to our communities and streets once in Parliament". She said having been involved in the legal profession since 1985, she has witnessed the deterioration of the country's systems and the inability of the criminal justice system to bring criminals to book.
"We will ensure that positions within the NPA, the police, the departments of Justice and Home Affairs are filled with skilled individuals, who can do the job, not deployed cadres. We will professionalise these institutions and depoliticise them. We will entrench the independence of the NPA, by establishing a direct reporting line to Parliament and ensuring the budget allocation comes from Parliament.
Sweeping reforms
Seton said Action SA will reform and review the criminal justice system to ensure that criminals are successfully and swiftly prosecuted, and that those who commit violent crimes are dealt with harshly. "When a sentence of life imprisonment is imposed it must mean exactly that. We will increase penalties for violent crimes as the punishment of committing crime should act as a deterrent."
She also said the prison system needs reform "to ensure gangsters cannot operate with impunity within prison walls".
"We will establish specialised units to deal with the organised crime that has pervaded every aspect of our society, from taxi mafias to construction mafias. This must stop," said Seton.
"We will free up funding by reducing the expenditure on VIP protection to a cap of 0,5% of the policing budget and ensure that the NPA and police are properly resourced."