With an eye on 2024, ANC slow-walks or blatantly disregards Zondo recommendations on parliamentary oversight

23 Apr 2023

ANC MPs have dismissed the Zondo Commission’s recommendation for opposition legislators to chair some parliamentary committees, and are tactically dithering on the recommendation to establish an oversight committee on the Presidency that is increasingly centralising powers.

While the quality and extent of parliamentary oversight remains a point of discussion depending on the side of the House – is it receiving a briefing from a minister and officials, or is it actually interrogating missing rands and cents and performance targets? – Budget Vote 1, the Presidency, escapes dedicated scrutiny.

No parliamentary oversight committee exists for the Presidency, which includes Intelligence, the National Security Council, infrastructure, climate change, the cutting of red tape, structural reform unit Operation Vulindlela, the State-owned Entity (SOE) Council and so much more. And so the annual Budget Vote 1 debates turn into commentary on presidential leadership.

Amid the presidential Phala Phala farm forex saga, there is public outcry over ANC MPs voting down parliamentary probes. There are accusations that the ANC again is shielding another president like they did in the Nkandla debacle.

ANC legislators sidestepped an outright rejection of a Presidency oversight committee in favour of kicking for touch when the rules committee sub-committee on Parliament-specific recommendations from the Zondo Commission met on Friday, 21 April.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Litmus test for Parliament — quality oversight, or an accommodation to avoid ANC embarrassment

“We don’t say we reject… We can’t make a blanket recommendation that we must have a [Presidency oversight] committee,” said ANC MP Hope Papo, ex-deputy president David DD Mabuza’s ex-parliamentary counsellor. He called for more research and reports.

Fellow ANC MP Mina Lesoma added later: “I wonder what’s the rush, the impatience and the agitation… We need to be satisfied that there are other lessons we can borrow from other countries… We haven’t reached the stage where we can say we agree or disagree. Let’s engage.”

Earlier IFP Chief Whip Narend Singh called for an in-principle decision. “It must not be a political decision. It must be a decision based on good governance. It must be a decision on what our Constitution says … must happen.”

DA Chief Whip Siviwe Gwarube said it was “critical” for a Presidency committee to be established, as did African Transformation Movement (ATM) leader Vuyolwethu Zungula.

But given ANC numbers, a decision was held over – possibly until the post-2024 election Parliament.

The recommendation for opposition committee chairpersons was wiped off the table – no “coalitions of a special type” could be allowed. The ANC pointed out it was just a practice, not a rule, that the public spending watchdog, Scopa, is chaired by an opposition MP.

Finish and klaar.

Zero for Zondo?

The rules committee is expected to formally decide on Tuesday about the sub-committee’s submission regarding the Zondo Commission’s recommendation on the Presidency committee, rejecting opposition chairpersons. It insists that the tracking of parliamentary resolutions for ministers and improved executive attendance is already happening alongside better question slots in the House.

Unlike the rest of South Africa, Parliament no longer calls the Zondo Commission that, but something along the lines of “the commission dealing with State Capture”.

National Assembly Speaker Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula ruled “Zondo Commission” was inappropriate as “it’s just a nickname”, after Papo asked: “[D]o we use the term ‘Zondo Commission’ in official records of Parliament because that’s not the real name.”

This reflects the increasing turn to hollow and officious protocol that’s taken hold in Parliament, which has the constitutional powers to scrutinise all executive actions, as well as those of state entities, while being able to call anyone before parliamentary committees.

Tradition in democratic South Africa is always to name a commission after its chairperson – such as:

The 2008 “Ginwala Commission”, headed by ex-Speaker and now late Frene Ginwala, into the fitness for office of then prosecutions’ boss Vusi Pikoli;

The 1994 “Cameron Commission” into arms dealing chaired by now retired Constitutional Court Judge Edwin Cameron;

The 2004 “Hefer Commission”, which dealt with the spying allegations against then prosecution boss Bulelani Ngcuka chaired by Judge Joos Hefer; or

The “Farlam Commission” of Judge Ian Farlam into the August 2012 police killing of 34 Lonmin miners.

The Zondo Commission’s full name is the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State Capture, Corruption and Fraud in the Public Sector including Organs of State.

Watch for more parliamentary verbiage.

A numbers game

Like the ANC keeps reminding everyone in general – and the opposition in particular – it is in power and has the numbers to get its way.

And so no questions came when Thursday’s programming committee heard that the Cabinet intended to introduce 42 or 44 draft bills – 12 as priority – before the elections that will happen in early August next year, at the latest. There are 28 bills already before Parliament.

For several years now, Parliament has passed only a few laws more than the must-do financial legislation to give effect to the Budget and October’s Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement. It takes, on average, two years to pass a bill; sometimes longer.

Parliament had to ask the Constitutional Court twice for extensions beyond the 24-month timeline on the electoral amendment legislation for independent candidates in national and provincial polls.

Yet, the habits that have crept in recently, remain.

The National Assembly has not returned to its centralised public hearings approach that was in place until 2018, when a round of provincial public hearings was introduced for the widest possible input on the hot-button topic of amending the Constitution to expressly allow expropriation without compensation.

That done, the National Assembly provincial public hearings continued even on technical amendment bills – effectively a duplication of the prerogative of the National Council of Provinces.

Also staying put is the 10-week mid-year recess first introduced in 2018 to replace the traditional three-week break ahead of the 2019 elections With an eye on the 2024 campaign trail essentially already on the go, Parliament goes on another 10-week recess from mid-June. DM

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Zero for Zondo?