Ian Clayton
The National Council of Provices (NCOP) has released three reports that raise serious doubts about the functioning of the council and the involvement of the provinces in Parliament’s legislative programme.
The fact that both the chair of the NCOP, Terror Lekota, and his deputy, Naledi Pandor, have been nominated by the African National Congress for the National Assembly, and the regular failure of some Cabinet ministers to turn up for NCOP sittings, also indicate an increasing marginalisation of the second house of Parliament.
Just three years after the new Constitution was negotiated and then ratified in the Constituent Assembly, the role of the provinces and the NCOP is being reassessed.
In a recent advertisement, the constitutional review committee asked: ”Do provinces have the right amount of power? Should they have more – or less – power?”
The leadership of both the ANC and Inkatha Freedom Party have already answered those questions, in part, by summarily removing the premiers of the two most populated provinces – Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal – as well as those of the Free State and Mpumalanga.
Although the NCOP, which was established in February 1977, is provided for in the Constitution and has received the public support of President Nelson Mandela and Deputy President Thabo Mbeki, its own consultants have identified problems.
They have found that provincial legislative committees have not been briefed on new laws and that many provincial departments are simply not involved in the research and public input stage of the legislative process.
They also found that ”constantly changing committee schedules and briefings” were the most common complaint by provincial participants in a series of workshops held in the difference provinces.
”Nearly every participant who had served as a special delegate conveyed frustrating stories of incurring two days of travel to arrive in Cape Town for a particular briefing, only to find the briefing had been postponed until later in the week when they were due to report to their own provinces on its outcome,” one report says.
”Interviewees also complained of receiving notices of important briefings at the very last minute – too late for them to arrange to have a staff member attend.”
The report notes that the NCOP was exploring options – including cable television broadcasting of NCOP meetings and briefings – to enable provinces to participate without having to send delegates to Cape Town. It also calls for the introduction of a standards-based communications system based on the Internet to be introduced to monitor and manage the information flow between the NCOP and the provinces and local government structures.
Another report quotes Lekota lambasting Cabinet ministers for not turning up at the council to answer questions. Lekota complained about the non-participation of ministers in the NCOP again this year.
The report said one of these incidents, during which ”a visibly angry [Trevor] Manuel stormed out”, received a great deal of press coverage and Lekota received both credit and criticism for his stand.
”On the one hand, he was lauded for his principled stand and his insistance that ministers attend sittings when required. This was hailed as a sign of the kind of independence legislatures need to display in a healthy democracy.
”Others from within the ANC felt that the matter should have been handled with more diplomacy.”
Lekota was quoted as saying that many Cabinet ministers were still not familiar with the role of the NCOP and ”they tend to speak of the National Assembly as though that is the whole of Parliament”.
The report concludes: ”Clearly, a long process of discussion is required before political agreement is reached on the oversight functions on the NCOP. This is not surprising given the newness of the NCOP and the fact that it brings together so many levels of government.”
But with these organisational problems and the sidelining of the NCOP process by the leadership of political parties and members of the Cabinet, the very existence of the NCOP and the provinces, at least in their current shape, is at stake.