A key focus of the African National Congress conference in December will be the relationship between the party and the government, including the deployment of members and their accountability and effectiveness.
Two conference draft resolutions, if adopted, will ask the ANC national executive committee to review the function of MPs and provincial parliamentarians, relations between the party and the government and the size of the various legislatures.
Such a review is part of efforts to monitor and evaluate the implementation of policy and performance of members, said a senior ANC official. In some cases the deployment policy meant officials were not sufficiently briefed ahead of redeployment.
Last year the ANC established a committee of its senior government officials to coordinate the interaction between government and Parliament.
Meanwhile, the ANC draft resolution “to retain the current electoral system and to review the constituency work of its public representatives to enhance accountability” could be amended at the December conference.
Claims that the ruling party had prejudged the outcome of the electoral task team, due to submit its report on November 11, first surfaced after the ANC announced it wanted to retain the present system-policy conference at the end of September. It arose again this week during Deputy President Jacob Zuma’s question time in Parliament on Wednesday.
“The ANC as one of the major parties, in fact the majority party, has a constitutional right to form a position on this,” said Zuma. “Government will consider the task team report once it has been completed.”
In 10 days the team, under Frederick van Zyl Slabbert, will submit its report and a draft Bill containing recommended changes to Minister of Home Affairs Mangosuthu Buthelezi.
Prioritising poverty alleviation and transformation, draft resolutions at the conference deal with issues including:
Real black economic empowerment and grassroots mobilisation to ensure that particularly women, young people and the disabled acquire meaningful stakes in the economy;
Job creation through public works programmes;
Support for labour-intensive sectors such as construction and private-public partnerships to halve unemployment by 2014; and
Social welfare, such as food security, extending social grants and placing the ANC “at the forefront of community mobilisation and leadership around HIV and Aids”.
Although there is a call for a national health insurance scheme, the draft resolutions are silent on the R100 universal basic income grant as endorsed by the Taylor report on a comprehensive social security system.