The row over money spent on an Aids play has brought the relationship between the executive and legislature under the spotlight, writes Gaye Davis
THE balance of power between the executive and legislature is becoming a central and highly contentious issue in what some politicians see as improper interference in the parliamentary process by the Cabinet and the presidency.
The furious controversy over the R14,27-million for Mbongeni Ngema’s Aids play — and allegations that President Nelson Mandela intervened to protect his Minister of Health Dr Nkosazana Zuma — has brought the complexity of the relationship between the two arms of government into sharp focus.
Questions remain about the circumstances surrounding the postponement of the hearing ordered by Dr Manto Tshabalala, chair of the parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Health, and which finally went ahead this week.
Allegations that Mandela blocked the hearing, telling Tshabalala to let the matter rest, and that it was rescheduled only after Deputy President Thabo Mbeki intervened, prompted a joint statement from Mandela and Mbeki’s offices.
It said Mandela had not instructed the committee to cancel the meeting and that Mbeki’s intervention was “a follow-up on the president’s initiative to ensure that the matter be resolved without needless public wrangling based on speculation rather than fact”. The statement noted the “absolute importance of the separation of the legislative and executive arms of government”.
But the failure of African National Congress MPs at Wednesday’s hearings to pose any probing questions about the sponsorship of Sarafina II prompted opposition charges that committee members had been “silenced”.
Zuma, accompanied by her director general Dr Olive Shisana, Aids directorate head Quarraisha Abdul Kareem and chief of support services, Hugo Badenhorst, spent much of the allotted time detailing the extent of the Aids epidemic and her department’s plans to combat it, which included the decision to use European Union funds to sponsor Ngema’s play.
Questions about the funding and how it was spent came from the Democratic Party, Pan Africanist Congress, National Party and African Christian Democratic Party, while ANC members were largely silent.
DP spokesman on health, Mike Ellis, claimed the committee had been “stifled from the top”. It was clear ANC members had been told to allow the meeting to go ahead, but not to embarrass the minister or members of her department, he said.
“We are obviously moving into a situation where the executive is interfering more and more with the work of legislators and that is an intolerable situation.” He cited efforts to stampede through Parliament last year the Education Policy Bill, which saw minority parties successfully rallying around a petition to force the bill before the constitutional court.
The bill’s passage was crucial for Minister of Education Sibusiso Bengu to start transforming the education system. Local government elections were also looming. Ellis said if the bill had been afforded due process, with the committee hearing submissions from interested parties, it would “definitely not” have gone to the constitutional court. “Committee members must be allowed to ask questions and hold people to account, or transparency and accountability go out of the window. The executive must not interfere with the legislature,” he said.
Portfolio committees — so named because they shadow ministerial portfolios — have extensive powers to not only scrutinise legislation and policy but also to call ministers and department officials to account for their actions.
Under NP governments, committees functioned merely to endorse laws and policy drawn up by the executive — and did so behind closed doors. One of the first moves the ANC made ,as the majority party in government, was to throw their proceedings open to the public.
Most committees are chaired by ANC MPs, whose loyalties lie primarily with ensuring ANC policy objectives are reached. The relationship is further complicated by the politics of the Government of National Unity: ANC committee members appear happier putting hard questions to ministers from parties other than their own. Yet committees are accountable not to government, but to the public.
After a recent recommendation by the Joint Standing Committee on Defence, chaired by ANC MP Tony Yengeni, that English replace Afrikaans as the language of command, control and training in the defence force, Mandela went on record as saying he had “pulled (the committee) up” on the matter.
On the face of it, interventions like these raise questions about whether the balance is tipping in favour of the executive. In fact, they illustrate the dynamism of the relationship between the executive and the legislature. The line drawn between the two is not clearly drawn. Nor should it be, argues ANC MP Jennifer Schreiner.
“It is an issue that has been alive as a debating point since we arrived — and hopefully it will never stop being so,” she said. “Otherwise we will find a line has been drawn, and that we’re back in the days of NP rule with the legislature operating like a rubber stamp.”
Interventions by the executive should not be seen by definition as negative, she said. “If you have a hypothetical situation where a committee is taking a decision that will retard the work of a department or seriously set back processes underway, the political leadership cannot just stand back. Intervention by the executive on an issue is not by definition undue influence.”
Professor Fanie Cloete, head of policy analysis at Stellenbosch University’s School of Public Management, agrees. “Mandela’s intervention on the defence issue was good. It could have brought about conflict and he was toning down the extreme position taken by the committee.”
However, intervention over Zuma’s appearance before the health committee could be viewed “more negatively, as curtailing the idea of an independent legislature”.
Said Cloete: “Committees now have much more life and independence. Their relationship with the executive is still developing. The main thing is for President Mandela and cabinet ministers to tolerate this new activism from Parliament, otherwise we’ll be falling back into the trap of the past.”
ANC MP Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, who chairs the portfolio committee on public service and administration, said: “There are tensions, it’s bumpy. But that’s healthy. The independence of committee chairs is not the only consideration. At this point there are no set rules, so we are all learning. It depends on the minister, the department and the issues. Sometimes one does have to take dramatic decisions.”