Hon Deputy Speaker, hon Acting President of the Republic, hon Speaker, fellow compatriots, former combatants of uMkhonto weSizwe who are sitting in the gallery today, I would like to take this opportunity to wish hon member Ting-Ting Masango, a former death-row inmate and a gallant fighter of our people's uMkhonto weSizwe, well as he recovers in hospital.
The mandate for Parliament's oversight role emanates from section 42(3) of the Constitution, which defines the role of the National Assembly as follows:
The National Assembly is elected to represent the people and to ensure government by the people under the Constitution. It does this by choosing the President, by providing a national forum for public consideration of issues, by passing legislation and by scrutinizing and overseeing executive action.
The Assembly is further required in terms of section 55(2) to: ... provide for mechanisms -
a. to ensure that all executive organs of state in the national sphere of government are accountable to it; and b. to maintain oversight of - I. the exercise of national executive authority, including the implementation of legislation; and II. any organ of state.
Historically, the legacy of the apartheid - era parliamentary and post-1994 oversight role of Parliament lacked the credibility, commitment and/or vigour to hold the executive accountable. Thus, the fourth Parliament in this dispensation faces the challenges of reasserting itself, of renewing its institutional systems and of organisational change, and it must seek new ways in which to evaluate its reports and hold the executive accountable. Some studies, though not fully tested, have ranked the South African Parliament as the lowest performer in its oversight role. Hence the call by the President of the Republic to ensure the shift to an activist Parliament that is guided by the mandate of the electorate. Thus, a political debate on the role of oversight provides an excellent opportunity to review our approach to oversight, ensuring that we place caucus at the epicentre of oversight and accountability over our shared ideals and objectives.
At the core of Parliament's oversight role is that its activities should be people-driven and based on the will of the people and guided by their aspirations, with a working-together-to-do-more approach, which necessitates accountability from the executive. The necessary demarcation in the separation of powers has resulted in varied challenges. The duty of Parliament, acting on proxy from the electorate, is to express the aspirations of the various constituencies and must be grounded in the understanding that caucuses are also charged with the responsibility of adding value to the process of oversight.
Drawing on such mandates it is then the duty of the executive to plan, execute and report on its activities. In finality, it is the duty of the caucus to evaluate and scrutinise in order to determine whether or not the needs of the people and the strategic objectives and aspirations of the electorate and the ruling party are fully addressed. The oversight and accountability mechanism should not necessarily yield such tensions as seen between legislatures and executives around the world. These tensions often emanate from misunderstandings and an overarching aura of suspicion amongst structures, and feelings that one wishes to usurp the powers or undermine the authority of the other. The ruling party's approach in the fourth Parliament must seek to strengthen the oversight role in the context of collective ownership and work together to do more to achieve the goals set out in the manifesto of the ANC: My ANC, My Vision, My Future! [Applause.]
The historical, traditional oversight roles of portfolio committees have been inherited from the Westminster system and, perhaps to some extent, from contemporary political philosophies such as those of Plato in which the executive is seen as benevolent dictators that have divine wisdom on the needs of society. Consequently, today it is often touted that parliamentary roles on oversight and accountability should be based simply on checking whether governments perform on their self-determined programmes and are able to provide audited statements for their spending. On the other hand, the dominance of liberal thinking has changed this relationship to an "us and them" approach in which caucuses effectively become the opposition within the party.
The understanding therefore would be that the executive's responsibility is to implement the ruling party's manifesto, derived from the ANC policy, as adopted in the democratic process which is the party's conference.
Largely, when we evaluate, we evaluate on the basis of expenditure and financial prudence, rather than political outcomes that should speak directly to the manifesto and the ruling party's priorities.
The National Assembly Rules that govern the work of committees allow for committees to pursue proactively any concern they may have with the performance of the executive. They may also initiate investigations themselves, hold a hearing or an inquiry, and request, via the House, that particular agencies or institutions conduct a special investigation. For example, during the third Parliament the House called for a debate to investigate Eskom with regard to power outages. Committees may also pursue investigations themselves. Experience has shown that these powers have not been proactively used, and in some cases reporting on these matters is done by the departments themselves. This therefore calls for the activist Parliament to be more inquisitorial in its approach. Arguably, this opens up an opportunity for better political management of underperformance, while portfolio committees should not dictate the operational activities of departments. Where there are challenges, there must be a proactive approach in initiating investigations or recommending changes to ensure collective ownership and that service delivery is maintained.
The relationship between the executive and the portfolio committee thus needs to be handled better. The ANC study groups should begin to establish better collaboration with Ministers and Deputy Ministers to ensure better co-ordination towards the implementation of policy. The ruling party's study groups should be rooted in the ANC traditions of democratic centralism, criticism and self-criticism, and robust debate. This means that the work of the study groups and committees should be complementary and constructively critical where necessary to ensure that the ANC programmes remain rooted in our priorities.
The executive must also play a critical part in bringing the study groups on board as partners. We should no longer have departmental accounting officers accounting for departments, but must rather focus on Ministers or their Deputies playing significant roles in study group debates.
While many have in the past argued that the administrative heads of departments normally sign the departments' accounts and drive the operation of departments in their functions as accounting officers, we need more of a political approach. This has led to the committees and study groups focusing on interrogating the administrative heads instead of the political heads.
The task of study groups is to scrutinise the political direction and leadership of departments. Ministers are responsible for the strategic and political leadership of departments, including the political outcomes of the programmes they implement. They ultimately account on the political outcomes. This then necessitates the inculcation of a culture in which Ministers account before committees and study groups so that they do not relegate performance management and implementation of the ruling party's manifesto to administrators only, but also play an active role in overseeing performance of the departments and holding civil servants accountable.
We look forward to a vibrant, activist Parliament truly representing the aspirations of the wonderful South Africans who continue to have faith in us. Fellow compatriots, thank you very much. [Applause.]