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Marion Edmunds
CONFUSION and administrative chaos have bedevilled the National Council of Provinces, the body which replaced the senate in February.
The politicians and technocrats who dreamed the council up at constitutional negotiations have been trying to breathe life into it. In a bold move this week, the Cabinet endorsed an ambitious plan to make the country’s 11 law-making bodies – the nine provincial legislatures, the National Assembly and the council – march in step, work in sync, get online and surf the Internet.
Dissatisfaction among council delegates is palpable. This week its chair, Patrick “Terror” Lekota, promised it would work better after the parliamentary winter recess.
Many delegates do not fully understand the council’s purpose nor its rules – there is a sense of hostility from the National Assembly, the council timetable shifts like sand and delegates scurry between Cape Town and their provincial bases.
To compound it all, this week Deputy President Thabo Mbeki’s office had not realised his speaking time in the council was 10.30am rather than 2pm. The bells announcing the start of the council session rang relentlessly for 20 minutes while they searched for Mbeki.
Lekota and council deputy chair Bulelani Ngcuka are shoring up the tide of despair, struck by the pressing need to tighten co- ordination between provincial legislatures, the National Assembly, the Cabinet and government departments.
“Given the fact that we are starting something new, given the fact that it is a very complex structure we are bringing in, we have done exceptionally well,” Ngcuka said.
He admitted, however, that the council is too complicated for a country still trapped in structural and political transition: “I don’t think we took into account the level of development in South Africa when we designed the council. We did not anticipate some of the problems, particularly the lack of administrative capacity in the provinces. We are still a Third-World country.”
During a recent tour of the provinces, Ngcuka and Lekota discovered that provincial delegates had been unable to read much of the information they had been sent because they did not know how to access e-mail from their computers. Now they are to go online and all delegates will learn to use modems and to surf the Internet.
“This is the age of networking. If you can’t do it, you have to get out of the council,” said Ngcuka.
The council is looking at setting up video- and voice-conferencing facilities to save money on its travelling bill – R5,8-million for this 1997/98 financial year, with provincial governments shouldering part of the burden. The council’s total budget is R37-million, just less than 10% of the R325-million budgeted for Parliament.
The council’s first great test will be a debate scheduled for September 15 when the house will discuss border disputes – such as Bushbuckridge.
If this debate truly expresses provincial interests and if delegates arrive at the right venue on time, Lekota and Ngcuka can boast that the council is beginning to realise the hopes once attached to it.