As Parliament prepares to rise for the 2017 year, the legislature’s presiding officers believe that it has improved immensely at its job in recent years and Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, the second in command in the executive, agrees, believing that Parliament could expedite its legislation process.
The week after Parliament rises, the focus of South African politics will shift to the ANC’s elective conference later in December. This conference is expected to mark the end of President Jacob Zuma’s time at the helm of the party.
Parliament under the Zuma administration has suffered a number of setbacks including an executive whose officials have disregarded it with impunity and damning rulings from the judiciary.
The courts have found against Parliament in matters including signal-jamming devices, which prevented reporters from tweeting from the National Assembly’s media gallery during the 2015 state of the nation address. In 2016, the Constitutional Court ruled that Parliament failed in its duty to hold the president accountable for violating his oath of office when he refused to implement the remedial actions of then public protector Thuli Madonsela regarding the undue benefits he enjoyed from state-funded security upgrades to his private home.
In this time, Parliament has also seen its increasingly draconian security come under scrutiny as the EFF signalled a change in the way the National Assembly would discuss salient matters in government.
In his capacity as leader of government business, Ramaphosa says that more bills are being passed in Parliament but that committees need to reduce the number of bills languishing on their agendas for more than six months.
"Currently 25 bills are before committees. Six bills have been with committees for over a year and that is concerning. Many MPs and ministers come to committees to give account on matters of national interest that they are dealing with. That demonstrates a robust Parliament," says Ramaphosa.
Regarding whether ministers and the president take the questions posed to them by MPs seriously, Ramaphosa says MPs must be patient with the executive on matters that are under investigation or are sub judice.
"I have found reason to kick back and say 400 members must hold the executive to account. This message is beginning to sink in, because the normal tendency is to shift blame to a figure or a personality to be a strongman that does heavy lifting. Having kicked back, I have seen signs of optimism," he says.
Replies are growing in number, with 4,236 written questions put by MPs to the executive. He notes a growing confidence in Parliament to hold the executive to account, citing the eighth motion of no confidence in Zuma.
National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete and National Council of Provinces Speaker Thandi Modise say Parliament has made significant strides in reimagining its core mandate since 2014.
Mbete says the fifth Parliament has passed 96 bills to date, with almost all assented to by Zuma, with the exception of the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Bill in 2014 and the Expropriation Bill in 2016.
"Parliament has built its own capacity to initiate and develop legislation by establishing a dedicated unit in the legal services section to support both MPs and committees of Parliament. A draft legislative model was also developed to ensure better compliance with constitutional prescripts such as public participation in the law-making processes," says Mbete.
Modise says the National Council of Provinces invested time and resources in building strong relations with the South African Local Government Association, "as part of mainstreaming the local sphere in the broader programmes of the legislative sector".
The proportion of highly skilled and professional staff has more than doubled, from 31% to 68% of the staff complement, affirming the institution’s commitment to grow this segment of its staff complement to 86% by 2030, she says.
Parliament has built its own capacity to initiate and develop legislation by establishing a dedicated unit in the legal services section to support both MPs and committees of Parliament.
— Baleka Mbete
National Assembly Speaker
"Parliament’s administrative arm also experienced a 13-point decline in its [missed] annual performance targets between 2014-15 and 2015-16, from 58.5% to 45.45%, as it was shifting from an activity-based to an outcome-based model, while also introducing a new method of the balanced score-card in evaluating individual and unit performance. Parliament has begun to turn the tide in this regard too, with an increase in 2016-17 to 49% of the targets achieved," Modise says.
Political analyst Somadoda Fikeni says that while positive outcomes have been found in Parliament’s work, this was more evident after the Constitutional Court ruled against it, which he says jolted MPs into action.
"What seemed to jolt Parliament into action was the Constitutional Court’s Nkandla judgment, which said the legislature was derelict in its duties. The second aspect was faction dynamics. There was an emerging front. There was also a national wave of [public] pressure against the most obvious wave of corruption, which no self-respecting ANC member could run away from," Fikeni says.
The way in which Parliament has been handling governance failures and maladministration also became clear when it convened inquiries into the state of parastatals such as the SABC and Eskom, he says.
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