The Week Ahead: Oversight visits & committee business dominate the week

This week marks the mid-way point of the third term and the programme has a familiar pattern: lots of unglamorous legislating, oversight and scrutinising, with some set piece battles in prospect.

Fireworks are expected during the debate on the parliamentary ad hoc committee report on the Nkandla upgrades. MPs visited ...

The week ahead: Another flashpoint looms

12 February 2015 was an extraordinary day and will remain firmly etched in the memories of many South Africans. The violent removal of the EFF, walkouts by the DA, Agang and COPE, and the jamming of cellphone signals left many stunned and overshadowed the President’s State of the Nation Address ...

LiveMagSA: The state of municipalities: Going back to basics

By Sheilan Clarke

Gauteng and the Western Cape are the top performing provinces in terms of the number of municipalities getting clean audits, while KwaZulu Natal has significantly improved since last year. This is according to Minister of Co-Operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Pravin Gordhan. He was speaking at a ...

The Week Ahead: Infrastructure theft, the Dalai Lama, and the abuse of older persons

President Zuma’s annual address to the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) is expected to steal the limelight this week. The theme for this year’s event is “Celebrating 20 years of a Democratic Parliament – together moving the NCOP forward as a vanguard of the interests of provinces”. Another story ...

The Week Ahead: Legislative business returns

Parliament has been starved of legislative action for the past few weeks, with committees focused on preparing their Budgetary Review and Recommendations Report (BRRR). While there is still some leftover work in that regard, there is quite a lot of heavy legislative lifting scheduled this week- with five bills up ...

The Week Ahead: NCOP focuses on service delivery

Parliament’s National Council of Provinces (NCOP) will host the Provincial Week in all nine provinces from 8 to12 September 2014. The Provincial Week theme is: ‘Together making service delivery work for our people’. The permanent delegates to the NCOP will use this opportunity to:

  • Interact with members of the ...

Community essential to police work, says Minister

In his Police Budget Vote address in Parliament on Monday, Minister of Police Nkosinathi Nhleko, said that policing cannot exist without community support and participation, and that policing needs to continue to be subjected to public scrutiny to keep them accountable.

“The NDP [National Development Plan] envisions a state with ...

Local Government getting back to basics, says Minister

In his Budget Vote address yesterday, Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Pravin Gordhan, told MPs “the test of change is when citizens themselves attest that they have a decent living environment, they enjoy safety for themselves and their children, they can easily access educational and health facilities, they are ...

SONA Debates: ANC and DA go head-to-head

While Wednesday’s debate saw opposition leaders Mmusi Maimane and Julius Malema take centre state in the critique of the President’s State of the Nation Address (SONA), Thursday saw the ANC MPs rise to the challenge of defending the President’s speech. Today saw Zuma give a measured response to issues raised ...

Budget 2014: Where we are with the NHI

At a seminar co-hosted by the Budget Expenditure Monitoring Forum (BEMF), Section 27 and Alternative Information and Development Centre (AIDC) yesterday, Daygan Eager from the Rural Health Advocacy Project (RHAP) did a presentation on what the recent budget tells us about progress on National Health Insurance (NHI).

Eager said that ...