The new Constitution will scrap the Senate and replace it with a National Council of Provinces, with hotlines to all nine regional governments, reports Marion Edmunds
The Senate is due to be replaced by a National Council of Provinces (NCOP) with permanent and floating members — including the premiers of the nine regions who will participate for the first time in central government.
The final Constitution, currently in the last stages of negotiation in the Constitutional Assembly, leaves the National Assembly pretty much the same as at present, albeit minus 50 seats.
But the NCOP will have 54 permanent delegates, nominated by political parties in the provincial legislature, with six coming from each province; and 36 seats for floating delegates, four from each province.
These floating or special delegates will not always be the same people — depending on the matter or legislation under discussion different people with the right expertise will be mandated by the provincial legislature to appear in the NCOP to represent their province in debate and voting. The premiers will lead the floating delegations, bringing them centre stage in important national debates on provincial interests.
Another new body to appear on the scene is the Mediation Committee. This will combine, most probably, the nine best consensus-seeking politicians from the National Assembly and nine provincial representatives from the NCOP, one per province. This committee is an interesting development because it will be a small forum in which party-political disputes over legislation relating to the provinces will be hammered out.
If the NCOP opposes legislation relating to provincial powers or it wants to amend such draft legislation, the legislation must go for discussion to the Mediation Committee in order to find consensus.
The council can introduce a Bill on any matter relating to provincial powers as defined in Schedule Five — a schedule listing provincial powers —and if agreement is not found on the Bill within the NCOP or the Mediation Committee, the draft Bill will lapse.
The NCOP cannot block Bills which fall outside of Schedule Five, but it can force the National Assembly to reconsider legislation before finally adopting it, effectively delaying its adoption. The council will decide on Bills by majority vote.
The other significant but expected change from the current to the future government is that the majority party will not have to share Cabinet seats with other political parties. It is possible that a future president might offer Cabinet seats to members of opposition parties, as a gesture of reconciliation and nation-building, but the final Constitution does not prescribe power-sharing in any way.
Finally, local government will be an interesting tier of government to watch because it is evolving at its own pace, and should gain more independence, status and power as 1999 draws nearer.
Among other things, the Constitution stipulates that laws should be made to create an umbrella body for all local governments – — at this stage, called Organised Local Government. This body will have a voice in the NCOP, giving national political debate a depth and range that it has never had before in South Africa. However, Organised Local Government will not have voting power.