Excerpt: What began with LFN noticing a simple spelling error — “Offense” instead of “Offence” — opened a far more troubling question: where is the actual Conspiracy, Instigation and Incitement to Commit Offence Bill, 2026? Cabinet has approved this potentially far-reaching criminal-law Bill for introduction in Parliament, the Justice Minister has publicly explained what its clauses and Schedule supposedly contain, yet the actual Bill remains remarkably difficult for the public to access. With its roots in the segregation-era Riotous Assemblies Act and its potential implications for freedom of expression, protest and activism, LFN asks why nobody (either the MSM or popular social media platforms) appears to have demanded to read the legislation behind the headlines.
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Sometimes a very big story begins with a very small mistake.
In this instance, it began with one word.
“Offense.”
When the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development announced a media briefing concerning four important pieces of proposed legislation, Liberty Fighters Network (“LFN”) immediately noticed something peculiar.
The Department referred to the “Conspiracy, Instigation and Incitement to Commit Offense Bill, 2026.”
South Africa does not ordinarily spell offence the American way. More importantly, elsewhere in the very same announcement, the Department gave the Bill’s title correctly as the Conspiracy, Instigation and Incitement to Commit Offence Bill, 2026. It later changed back to “Offense” when describing it.
Probably just a typographical error.
But it caught our attention.
And when LFN followed that seemingly insignificant loose thread, a far more serious question emerged:
Where is the actual Bill?
Three Bills to comment on — and a fourth Bill on a different road
Before going further, an important distinction must be made.
The initial impression created by much of the surrounding publicity could easily be that four Bills had been released together for public comment.
That is not, strictly speaking, what Cabinet approved.
Cabinet’s statement concerning its meeting of 29 July 2026 records that the General (Mining) Laws Amendment Bill, 2026, the Regulation of Trusts Bill, 2026, and the Legal Practice Amendment Bill, 2026, were approved for publication for public comment.
The Conspiracy, Instigation and Incitement to Commit Offence Bill, 2026, was treated differently. Cabinet approved that Bill for introduction in Parliament.
The Minister confirmed the distinction during her briefing on 11 August 2026. She stated that the first three Bills had been gazetted for public comment, with submissions closing on 11 September 2026, whereas the Conspiracy, Instigation and Incitement Bill had been approved by Cabinet and would be tabled in Parliament for processing and adoption.
That distinction matters.
LFN therefore does not presently allege that the Department was legally obliged to include this fourth Bill in the same public-comment process ending on 11 September 2026.
Our concern is different.
And, in some respects, more fundamental.
If Cabinet has approved a criminal-law Bill for introduction in Parliament, if the Minister is already publicly describing what its clauses will criminalise, and if South Africans are being told about the Bill through the media, why is the actual Cabinet-approved text not readily available for citizens to read for themselves?
We were actually looking at another Bill when the can of worms opened
LFN’s attention had initially been directed particularly towards the Legal Practice Amendment Bill, 2026.
That Bill deserves serious scrutiny of its own.
Among other matters, the Minister’s briefing states that clause 7 proposes expanding work reserved for legal practitioners and dealing with advertising or touting in respect of specified legal services.
For an organisation such as LFN, which continuously confronts the practical barriers experienced by ordinary people attempting to access justice, legislation affecting who may render particular forms of legal assistance deserves very careful consideration.
But while examining the Justice Department’s announcements, that little word — “Offense” — attracted our attention.
And we went looking for the other Bill.
We couldn’t find it.
So LFN asked the Minister’s spokesperson
On 11 August 2026, LFN emailed the Minister’s spokesperson, Ms Palesa Rammitlwa.
The request could hardly have been simpler:
The Department’s announcement had been perused, the Conspiracy, Instigation and Incitement Bill could not be accessed, and LFN asked for the relevant link to be made available.
The response was remarkable.
The spokesperson explained that the link referred to by LFN was the Media Advisory rather than the link to the Bills and then supplied what she described as the “correct link.”
Except it wasn’t.
The link she supplied was to the Legal Practice Amendment Bill, 2026 — precisely one of the Bills already available. It did not provide the Conspiracy, Instigation and Incitement Bill which LFN had specifically requested.
LFN therefore wrote back on 12 August 2026, explaining the problem again.
We pointed out that the public could read what the Minister said the Bill contained, but could not independently scrutinise the actual proposed legislation through the Department’s published material. We specifically requested that the Bill be uploaded and that a direct link be supplied.
At the time of publishing this article, that central question remains:
Where is the Bill?
Why this particular Bill matters enormously
This isn’t proposed legislation about changing an administrative form or adjusting an insignificant statutory definition.
It concerns criminal liability for conspiracy, instigation and incitement.
And its predecessor has a history South Africans should never forget.
The Bill is intended to repeal the remaining provisions of the Riotous Assemblies Act, 1956.
The Constitutional Court itself has recognised that legislation such as the Riotous Assemblies Act formed part of the draconian legislative machinery used to suppress historic assemblies and political activity.
The irony therefore demands scrutiny.
The democratic State wants to repeal a segregation-era statute that was historically capable of suppressing political activity — which is entirely understandable.
But it simultaneously intends replacing the remaining criminal-law machinery with a new statutory regime governing conspiracy, instigation and incitement.
That does not make the new Bill sinister.
It makes the wording of the new Bill exceptionally important.
The Constitutional Court has already warned us where the danger lies
This is not theoretical.
In Economic Freedom Fighters and Another v Minister of Justice and Correctional Services and Another [2020] ZACC 25, the Constitutional Court considered section 18(2)(b) of the Riotous Assemblies Act.
That litigation arose after statements attributed to Julius Malema concerning land occupation resulted in prosecution involving the Riotous Assemblies Act.
The Constitutional Court ultimately declared section 18(2)(b) inconsistent with section 16(1) of the Constitution, and invalid to the extent that it criminalised incitement to commit “any offence.”
The problem was overbreadth.
A law capable of criminalising incitement to commit even relatively minor offences reached too far into constitutionally protected expression.
The Court accordingly temporarily read the provision as applying to a “serious offence,” and afforded Parliament 24 months to cure the constitutional defect.
That period expired in November 2022.
The Minister now says this new Bill is intended to provide the permanent legislative solution.
That alone should make every journalist, activist, civil-rights organisation, political movement and ordinary South African sit up and pay attention.
And here is where the missing Bill becomes particularly important
According to the Minister’s own explanation, clause 1 of the new Bill will define a “serious offence” by reference to offences contained in a Schedule to the Bill, where imprisonment exceeding six months may be imposed.
The Minister further says clause 1 will deal with conspiring with another person to commit an offence and with instigating or inciting another person to commit a serious offence. Clause 2 will repeal the Riotous Assemblies Act, while the Schedule will identify the relevant serious offences.
Read that again.
The Schedule matters enormously.
Which offences are in it?
Exactly how is “incitement” framed?
What degree of intention will be required?
What connection must exist between the words spoken and the offence allegedly encouraged?
How will political rhetoric, protest speech, civil disobedience, boycotts and activist campaigns be distinguished from criminal incitement?
Could telling people collectively to resist an allegedly unlawful governmental measure conceivably fall within its wording?
Could encouraging people not to comply with some statutory obligation become actionable depending upon the Schedule?
What happens to the ordinary common-law principles governing attempt and conspiracy?
We are not suggesting what the answers are.
That is precisely the point.
Nobody should responsibly pretend to know those answers until we can read the legislation.
A Minister’s summary is not legislation.
A press release is not legislation.
A journalist repeating the Minister’s summary is not legislation.
And a Facebook post is certainly not legislation.
Show us the Bill.
There is another important fact: this Bill did not suddenly materialise in August 2026
Fairness demands that we record this too.
LFN’s investigation found that this legislative project has existed for several years.
A parliamentary record from 30 May 2023 already referred to a Criminal Law Amendment Bill which was to be called the Conspiracy, Instigation and Incitement to Commit Offence Bill, and which would repeal the Riotous Assemblies Act.
A later report concerning outstanding Constitutional Court judgments records that the Department consulted the National Prosecuting Authority and the South African Police Service, considered their inputs and revised the draft before taking it through further governmental processes.
Consequently, LFN cannot presently state as fact that the Bill was secretly drafted.
Nor can we responsibly state, without evidence, that somebody deliberately removed a link to prevent public scrutiny.
Those would be serious allegations requiring proof.
But what we can say is troubling enough:
A Cabinet-approved Bill dealing directly with criminal speech, incitement and conspiracy has now been publicly announced in considerable detail, yet the actual text which Cabinet approved is not readily available to the very public whose conduct it may eventually regulate.
That is a transparency problem worthy of attention.
What happened to “trust, but verify?”
Perhaps the most revealing part of this story is what happened in the media.
Major reports we located accurately repeated that three Bills were open for public comment and that the fourth would proceed to Parliament. SAnews did so. SABC did so. Other publications reproduced substantially similar summaries.
Some reports, however, used headlines or concluding language broadly encouraging public comment on the legislative package in a manner capable of blurring the distinction. One report even stated that the fourth Bill would go directly to Parliament and then proceeded to say that the public had until 11 September to comment on “the bills.”
But there is an even more basic journalistic question:
Who asked to see the fourth Bill?
The Minister spoke about a Schedule.
Who checked the Schedule?
The Minister explained what clause 1 supposedly does.
Who checked clause 1?
The Minister said this legislation will replace provisions already found constitutionally wanting for interfering with freedom of expression.
Who compared the replacement wording against the Constitutional Court judgment?
The reporting we located overwhelmingly tells the public what government says the Bill does.
That is not quite the same thing as independently establishing what the Bill actually says.
There is no evidence before LFN of some coordinated “script” imposed upon the media, and we will not manufacture one.
But this episode illustrates something arguably just as dangerous in a democracy: when official statements are endlessly repeated without the underlying primary document being interrogated, government does not need to control the news. The absence of independent verification can do much of that work by itself.
Where were the organisations one would expect to notice?
The silence is particularly striking because incitement, political speech and state power are hardly obscure subjects in South Africa.
Lex Libertas, for example, operates an entire campaign relating to incitement and has published extensively concerning allegedly dangerous and violent political expression.
Yet our searches as at 14 August 2026 did not locate material from the organisations and commentators we specifically searched for — including AfriForum, Lex Libertas and Willem Petzer — raising this particular question about access to the Cabinet-approved Bill.
That does not prove that none exists somewhere, nor does LFN claim omniscience over everything published online.
It does, however, demonstrate how easily a seemingly mundane omission can pass unnoticed.
LFN noticed it because we followed the document instead of merely following the headline.
What must happen next?
There is an established legislative process.
Parliament’s own explanation of that process records that, before introduction, the person intending to introduce a Bill must give notice of that intention in the Government Gazette and must publish either the draft Bill or an explanatory summary in the Gazette. The Bill is then formally introduced into Parliament.
This qualification is important.
The fact that LFN cannot presently locate the complete Bill does not, on its own, establish procedural illegality. The parliamentary pre-introduction rules permit publication of an explanatory summary rather than necessarily requiring publication of the complete draft Bill at that preliminary stage.
Once the Bill enters the legislative process, however, Parliament carries its own constitutional obligations.
Section 59(1)(a) of the Constitution requires the National Assembly to facilitate public involvement in its legislative and other processes, while section 72 imposes the corresponding obligation upon the National Council of Provinces.
LFN intends watching that process very closely.
But there is no conceivable democratic disadvantage in government simply publishing the Cabinet-approved text now.
If it is good legislation, let South Africans read it.
If its protection of freedom of expression is constitutionally sound, let constitutional lawyers test it.
If activists have nothing to fear, let activists inspect it.
If the Schedule is appropriately limited, let us see the Schedule.
Transparency should not be something government provides only when a procedural rule eventually compels it.
And what about the Minister?
The present controversy should not be reduced merely to the Minister’s qualifications.
The Department’s official profile records that Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi holds a Bachelor of Arts degree, a postgraduate qualification in project management and a master’s degree in public and development management, among other studies. It does not list a law degree or previous experience in a legal environment.
That fact does not legally disqualify her from serving as Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development.
A Minister is also supported by an extensive Department containing legislative-development officials, State Law Advisers and legally trained specialists.
The proper question is therefore not whether the Minister personally possesses an LLB. I don’t either.
The proper question is whether the Ministry over which she presides is exercising the exceptional responsibility entrusted to it with the required degree of precision, openness and constitutional sensitivity.
When proposed legislation can potentially affect expression, activism, access to justice and criminal liability, sloppy communication is not harmless.
Sending the wrong Bill after a citizen specifically asks for another Bill does not inspire confidence.
Using two different spellings for the title of the same Bill does not inspire confidence.
Describing clauses and a Schedule which citizens cannot readily inspect does not inspire confidence.
And failing to correct the problem after it has expressly been brought to the Ministry’s attention certainly does not improve that confidence.
The typo was small. The constitutional question isn’t.
LFN did not set out looking for this story.
We were examining another controversial piece of proposed legislation when one incorrectly spelt word caused us to look a little closer.
“Offense.”
We followed it.
We found a Bill approved by Cabinet.
We found a Minister telling South Africa what that Bill supposedly contains.
We found references to clauses.
We found reference to a Schedule.
We found its constitutional history.
We found the Constitutional Court judgment which explains why the old law could no longer remain untouched.
We found media reports repeating government’s description.
What we still haven’t readily found is the one document that matters most:
the actual Cabinet-approved Conspiracy, Instigation and Incitement to Commit Offence Bill, 2026.
Perhaps there is an entirely innocent administrative explanation.
If so, there is an extraordinarily simple cure.
Publish it.
Publish the Bill.
Publish its Schedule.
Publish its explanatory memorandum.
Identify the Gazette notice.
Tell South Africans exactly when and how they may make representations during the parliamentary process.
And correct “Offense” while you’re at it.
Until then, LFN will continue asking the question which, remarkably, seems to have attracted far less attention than it deserves:
Where is the Bill?
In a constitutional democracy, the people should never be expected to take government’s description of proposed criminal legislation on trust.
When liberty may ultimately depend upon the words written between clause 1 and the final Schedule, South Africans are entitled to read those words for themselves.
LFN will make sure they do.
Liberation Greetings
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