Land, state capture, minimum wage – key highlights of a busy 2018 for MPs that draws to close

The year 2018 started with a bang in Parliament with an unprecedented decision to delay the State of the Nation Address (SONA). Officially, that was to give space to the ANC to resolve its terse manoeuvring to breach the two centres of power, as the party jargon goes, between president of country, Jacob Zuma, and the recently elected president of the governing ANC, Cyril Ramaphosa.

Two days after Zuma’s Valentine’s Day 2018 resignation, Ramaphosa, who had been also been elected president of South Africa by the National Assembly, eventually delivered the SONA on 16 February 2018. That marked the start of a chock-a-block parliamentary calendar in which pressure was upped as MPs blocked off an additional three months for constituency work, effectively electioneering in communities, ahead of the 2019 elections.

The year in Parliament ended amid a series of sessions late into the evening to pass legislation, adopt committee reports and deal with a range of other matters. Foremost among them were the constitutional amendment for land expropriation without compensation and the public enterprises inquiry into State Capture at Eskom.

That parliamentary inquiry into State Capture at Eskom united MPs across party political divides as an example, similar to the 2016 SABC inquiry, where Parliament excels at its constitutional oversight mandate. The inquiry report was adopted by committee and the National Assembly in late November 2018 – and the report alongside all documentation and transcripts has been submitted to the Zondo State Capture inquiry.

In contrast, the constitutional amendment for compensationless land expropriation is anything but unifying. In the final days of Parliament, bruising divisions emerged amid vows of court action. And while an ad hoc committee has been established to steer the 18^th Constitutional Amendment Bill through the legislative pipeline, it’s by no means a pothole-less road.

The National Assembly passed eight Bill in its last week of the 2018 parliamentary calendar, and six a week earlier, including the R5-billion special appropriation for SAA to keep the national airliner in the air plus the Adjustments Appropriation Bill that effects the spending allocation rejigs to departments as per October’s Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS).

That’s 14 Bills in two weeks or, in a rough estimate, 60% of the total 23 Bills passed in the whole of 2018 – almost matching the 18 Bills passed in the whole of 2017. All this means the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) is under legislative pressure – it now has a long list of draft laws to process before Parliament dissolves ahead of the 2019 elections. That which is not adopted and sent for presidential signature will lapse, although the new post-election Parliament may chose to revive matters.

One Bill that didn’t make it in 2018 in the National Assembly despite being on the Order Paper twice over two days, is the Road Accident Benefit Scheme Bill that’s meant to replace the Road Accident Fund. Opposition parties are opposed and filibustered - on neither day was there a quorum in the House.

But the 2018 legislative record reflects potentially ground-shifting laws like the National Minimum Wage law despite criticism it’s falling short of a decent wage, and the Public Audit Amendment Act, one of the rare committee-initiated laws, that gives the auditor-general teeth to refer chronic mismanagement in government to law enforcement agencies and to issue personal cost orders against accounting officers.

The ANC argued on Friday that the executive having answered 3,629 or the 4,243 written questions was a positive “85.5% accountability rate”.

Opposition parties would disagree; DA Chief Whip John Steenhuisen throughout the year has raised his party’s concerns over ministers not being in the House to respond to questions –and the slow pace of responding to written parliamentary questions. Some 614 remain outstanding. Of course, the EFF as it has repeatedly said inside and outside the House, has woken up the House, and made sure ANC MPs and minister could no longer sleep,

ANC Chief Whip Jackson Mthembu said on Friday that he would rate his caucus eight out of 10, with two marks taken off because not all laws that needed to be passed could be passed as “some members were not in the House and we could not muster the legislation” due to a lack of a quorum.

His 2018 highlight? Aside from the land expropriation without compensation process, it’s been the public enterprises committee inquiry into State Capture at Eskom that was part of Parliament’s fight against corruption. “(MPs) worked as a time belonging to the Parliament of South Africa… If you came from Mars, those asking questions before the inquiry, you would not know from which party that person (asking questions) came from because they were single-minded in their work as public representatives”.

The lowest point were the racial slurs, and fisticuffs, on the opposition benches between the EFF and DA during a heated session in President Cyril Ramaphosa’s last 2018 Q&A in the House in early November. “When on the floor of Parliament racial insults are thrown at MPs by MPs… that’s not a good example to set,” said Mthembu: “We are trying to build a country that will move away from where we come from.”

As international treaties like the extradition treaty with the United Arab Emirate were adopted – Section 231 of the Constitution requires parliamentary approval for international agreements to come into effect – a whole load of outstanding committee reports were also passed.

That included the Joint Standing Committee on the Financial Management of Parliament report on the national legislatures 2018 annual report when opposition parties across the board used their declarations to raise concerns over the failure to resolve the disciplinary matters against suspended Secretary to Parliament Gengezi Mgidlana, who’s not been at work since requesting special leave in June 2017 ahead of his suspension in November 2017. Or as National Freedom Party (NFP) MP Nhlanhlakayise Khubisa put it on Thursday: “The secretary is sitting at the Good Hope Chamber (for the hearings) stung along string along…” and costing Parliament money.

Steenhuisen said MPs had been told the disciplinary matter would be resolved by April 2018, but now it looked like this would continue until the end of the current Parliament and asked: “ What does Mgidlana have on others?”

IFP MP Mkhuleko Hlengwa pointed out Mgidlana still was earning an annual salary of around R3-million while on suspension. EFF MP Hlengiwe Mkhaliphi simply said: “We called for Mgidlana to fall. He fell.”

That came as the Announcements, Tablings and Committee Reports (ATC), or the record of Parliament’s work, published Mgidlana’s right of reply to EFF Chief Whip Floyd Shivambu’s description of him as “corrupt” during Parliament’s 2017 budget vote debate. That statement, Mgidlana wrote, “impugns my good name, character, dignity and standing in the eyes of South Africans and professionals…” This publication in Wednesday’s ATC followed a decision of the powers and privileges committee after the suspended Secretary to Parliament had complained to National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete. The impact of that powers and privileges committee decision on MPs’ privilege in the House, that had been sacrosanct, and freedom of expression remains to be seen.

It’s one of the matters often outside the public eye, including a swathe of outstanding ethics complaints against MPs and rule changes like the recent adopting of the parliamentary rules how to remove a sitting president in line with Section 89 of the Constitution.

In the public eye, although not yet at Parliament, is the saga of the SABC board. After a period of stability in the wake of the implementation of the fundamental changes recommended by the 2016 parliamentary SABC inquiry, the public broadcaster is again teetering on the brink.

Amid financial constraints, proposed retrenchments sparked ministerial interventions – four board directors resigned in the space of just over a week in early December. They joined four others who had resigned for various reasons earlier in the year. That means the SABC board is no longer quorate: it needs half of its 12 non-executive directors – there are only four left – alongside three executives, the CEO, chief operations officer and chief financial officer.

Parliament, which under the Broadcasting Act recommends SABC board members after a public process to the President, must now move. The parliamentary communications committee in a statement on Friday said it was concerned. “(N)ot only do the resignations come at a time when it (the committee) was in a process of filling the other four vacancies, but they also left the remaining board without a quorum. Therefore, it urged the executive management to steer the public broadcaster in the best interest of the country and in accordance with legislations while the committee moves with speed to fill all the eight vacancies.”

Elections by May next year notwithstanding, Parliament has its work cut out in 2019 – well beyond the legacy reports in the making. DM