Members of Parliament paid fines of R22 500 for absenteeism last year.
And, according to the register, which is known to be inaccurate, a number of MPs may pay up this year as well. IFP MP Dr DR Madide was away for 37 days between February and June this year, and the ANC’s chief whip Reverend Arnold Stofile 25 days. Another ANC whip, Jannie Momberg, is marked absent for 25 days of the first part of this year, IFP MPs Ziba Jiyane 22 days, his colleague BP Biyele 21 and Farouk Cassim 18 days.
But Parliament cannot keep track of its members, because its attendance register is inaccurate, old- fashioned and out of date.
Members of the parliamentary secretariat say they are pushing for a computerised register, where Parliamentarians could log in and log out of sittings and committees — a system that would be able to reveal at a glance who was loafing and who was working.
But, at the moment, the person who bears the brunt of the inadequate attendance system is a lesser-known parliamentary clerk called Yasmin Johnson, who is near as can be to cracking point. The parliamentary register dominates her life. She takes it home at nights to try to catch up on months of attendance.
Every parliamentary sitting demands that Johnson counts all members’ attendance slips manually and that she marks off the absentees in pink felt-tip pen on a long register. She then has to cross-reference the absentees with the registers from the more than sixty committees or so, to check that those absent from the house are not in fact sitting in committees.
Johnson also has to check absenteeism with medical certificates that might be handed in some weeks late. (For example, Johnson has certificates indicating that IFP MP Walter Felgate has been legitimately absent since January with heart trouble. ANC MP Dave Dalling has handed in medical certificates to justify a five- month absence due to ankle problems.)
No small wonder that the register is already more than a month behind. No small wonder that MPs who have resigned from the National Assembly to become ambassadors, or who have died, are still being marked absent some months after their departure. No small wonder that Prince James Mahlangu, the ANC MP who was expelled for non-attendance, missed almost 40 consecutive days of parliamentary sitting before his absence was noted.
Johnson is meant to alert the Sergeant-at-Arms when she finds truants. The parliamentary rules say that a member can be suspended if he or she is absent without leave for 15 consecutive days on which Parliament sits. The rules also indicate that those absent for thirty days with or without leave during the whole calendar year must pay a fine of R100 a day.
And even when the register is accurate, there is no guarantee that a member is spending more than ten minutes in Parliament on a sitting day. Members fill in an attendance slip when they enter the chamber, fold it up and put it into a box as they leave. The length of their presence is not noted. Similarly, they get ticked for arriving at a committee, but can leave it whenever they want.
It is up to the party whips to ensure that MPs are pulling their weight. While the National Party says it has an effective computerised register in place and that it can produce print-outs of members’ attendance dating back up to 30 years, the ANC has realised that it needs to tighten up its whipping.
After an ANC parliamentary caucus this week, it was decided to form four committees in the whips’ office to keep a tighter rein on members’ movements. One of those committees is also responsible for members’ education. This is much needed, said ANC whip Mavivi Mayakayaka- Manzini, even though it is more than a year since the
“Some members are still battling to understand the order paper and work out where they should be. Also, we have found that some members cannot tell the difference between the various bells rung in the house — which ones are calling for a quorum, which ones are for a vote and which ones mean that it is the end of the sitting,” she said this week.