Parliament is hoping to complete its plan to relocate the parliamentary media to new offices in Cape Town’s old South African Revenue Service building at 90 Plein Street before the start of next year’s session, Secretary to Parliament Zingile Dingani said on Monday.
The building is currently undergoing renovation, and will form part of the parliamentary complex.
Briefing the South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) annual general meeting in Bloemfontein, Dingani said the deadline for relocation was initially set for December 15.
However, a special task team — established to deal with the relocation of the media and discuss with the Press Gallery Association (PGA) how the process should unfold — is now discussing a new time frame with the PGA because of some outstanding matters.
”We want the process to be completed before the new parliamentary term for 2005,” Dingani said.
”The relocation to 90 Plein Street is in good faith envisaged to be long-term. However, unforeseen circumstances may require that this arrangement be reviewed. We do not foresee this happening in the near future.”
Over and above the relocation, Parliament is also in the process of formulating a media policy to ensure a broad representation of media in Parliament, including community newspapers and radio.
The allocation of offices to media has also taken this into consideration, as ”we would like to open the doors of Parliament to all media and not to a few”.
In terms of the new media policy, the secretary to Parliament will enter into lease agreements with the media houses to formalise current and future arrangements.
”It is considered that such a formalised agreement will allow the media at Parliament more security, and will demonstrate the good faith of Parliament in binding itself contractually,” he said.
This arrangement will also include a nominal rental to cover incidental costs to Parliament.
Giving reasons for the move, Dingani said that, among other things, since the advent of the new democratic order and the establishment of the first democratic and open Parliament in 1994, the institution’s political and administrative responsibilities have expanded to such an extent that the allocation of office space to accommodate these had to be reviewed.
”The previous apartheid Parliament had a far smaller complement that provided support to less than five parties. Today, we have a Parliament that has about 1 000 staff and 13 political parties.
”Each of these political parties needs to be accommodated with suitable office space to enable them to execute their mandates. Parliament is constitutionally bound to ensure that these, among other needs, are met.”
In addition, Hansard and language services — both translation and interpretation — that cater for all 11 official languages need to be close to the chambers of both Houses.
”The current situation is such that the divisions that render these services are located in different buildings in and outside the gates of the Parliamentary complex, and this has created an ineffective machinery that lacks coordination,” Dingani said. — Sapa