BARBARA Hogan, the African National Congress MP hotly tipped to succeed Gill Marcus as chairman of the influential Joint Standing Committee on Finance, this week stepped down as a candidate for the chair.
Hogan, who has been one of the committee’s most active members, said she had opted out of the running as she preferred to work quietly from the back benches, where she would be free from the ad-ministrative work that comes with the job.
However, others close to Hogan said she did not want to become involved in a political battle over the post – senior ANC officials are understood to be keen to have a black successor to Marcus, who
was made deputy finance minister in last month’s Cabinet reshuffle. Hogan refused to comment on this.
ANC MP Zingile Dingani, who was Marcus’s deputy, is likely to be the new chairman, another MP said. ANC MP Rob Davies would be elected deputy to Dingani.
The ANC has recently changed the rules for electing chairs of parliamentary committees so that the party as a whole, and not the committees themselves, now have a greater say.
Under Marcus, the finance committee carved itself an important role as a check against government profligacy.
As well as acting as a check against the executive, parliamentary committees are effectively specialists for political parties on particular areas of legislation. They hold hearings on Bills, preparing them for Parliament. Most are dominated by the ANC.
Dingani joined the ANC underground structures in 1982. He was national treasurer of the National Education Union, before it became part of the South African Council of Trade Unions.
Dingani said this week he trained as a teacher at the Cape College of Education in 1983 to 1984, and took a part-time degree in English and psychology at Vista University, where he also studied business economics and commercial law.
Earlier this year he took a course in economic policy formulation with the New School for Social Research in New York, and is currently completing a post-graduate diploma in economic principles at London University.
He was elected to Parliament as a Free State MP.