South Africa’s weak and poorly resourced Parliament can only find its voice if it is given new powers in the Budget process, and the resources to live up to them, a growing number of MPs and parliamentary officials believe.
The engine room of democracy is not a happy or productive place at present.
The parliamentary service, which handles administrative affairs, is beset by constant friction between staff and management, and the dismissal of finance chief Harry Charlton in January continues sharply to divide opinion.
Meanwhile, secretary to Parliament Zingile Dingani is at odds with the Speaker of the National Assembly, Baleka Mbete, over just how their areas of responsibility are defined, with Dingani courting the support of African National Congress MPs for an expanded ”operational” mandate.
What officials call the ”core business of Parliament”, law making and oversight, is not faring much better.
”Debate in the National Assembly really has started to look like the ritual observation of important days,” one senior ANC MP said. Instead of drawing confidence from their overwhelming majority, and putting difficult issues on the table, several ruling party MPs complain, their colleagues make worthy speeches on political anniversaries and leave the debating to the opposition.
The dismissal of Jacob Zuma was never discussed in the chamber where President Thabo Mbeki made the announcement. Nor were changes to the Constitution to do away with cross-boundary municipalities debated in any detail. Both are issues over which many ANC backbenchers and the Cabinet strongly disagree.
In the committees, where the nuts and bolts of parliamentary work are carried out, a profound shortage of resources and a limiting approach to oversight put tight constraints on what even the most energetic MPs can achieve.
Much of this is acknowledged by Mbete, who puts it down to the difficult process of post-apartheid institution building. ”We inherited an institution that was a rubber stamp, but we have been making progress,” she told the Mail & Guardian. A process is under way to beef up committees, which largely work without researchers or legal advisers.
Resource poverty can also compromise the committees’ independence. Too often, Mbete says, committees seeking changes to legislation ask the very government departments that wrote the original Bills to draft the new versions, instead of doing it themselves.
”[Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development Brigitte Mabandla] correctly points out that it is wrong for departmental officials to help with drafting,” she said. ”It is an untenable situation, and has created a dependency syndrome on the part of some members of Parliament.”
If that is true of the high-profile justice committee, which can call on MPs with legal backgrounds and long parliamentary experience, it is a much more urgent problem in the back-waters of the committee system.
And the perceived weakness of Parliament means that it is often bypassed in favour of lobbying the executive.
”Business doesn’t come here if it’s got a problem, it goes to the relevant minister,” said one senior ANC MP.
More resources will be forthcoming, said Mbete, starting with plans to ensure that each MP gets a secretary.
But that will only make a meaningful difference if the ANC and the executive branch commit to a more robust Parliament.
”The management of Parliament and the committees section has a very narrow view of oversight, which involves us listening to the state of the nation address and checking whether its goals are achieved. We need a much more complex model of oversight,” said one MP.
The ability to change money Bills would potentially give Parliament far more leverage in the legislative process, however.
The Budget is described by Treasury as the most concrete expression of government policy, but Parliament plays only a ceremonial role in its promulgation. It is the subject of committee hearings and a final vote, but its components cannot be changed.
MPs may not take cash from an underperforming department and give it to one that is doing better, nor veto spending plans, nor force the Treasury to dispense more money overall. The legislature could, theoretically, tell Trevor Manuel to make changes, but it has never even contemplated doing so.
”It is not a question of whether Parliament should be able to make changes. It is in the Constitution; we have to do it,” Mbete said.
MP Barbara Hogan, who chaired the finance committee until 2004, has long called for Parliament to be granted its full constitutional role.
”You need to make your voice heard before the Budget gets to you, and influence it as it is being prepared. The National Treasury now provides huge amounts of information about how money is spent.
Parliamentary oversight is not just saying how much each department is getting, but looking at outputs. You’re talking about Parliament being able to hold the executive accountable, and make a real political noise.”
This does not mean a United States-style approach, where legislators adopt pork-barrel spending projects as they pander to constituents or donors. But Parliament must be able to put its foot down, Hogan says: ”Parliament must have the power to say ‘Okay, now we cut or freeze your budget.’”
Other senior parliamentarians back that approach. Manuel, they say, has campaigned against the legislation by claiming it will create chaos or gridlock in the fiscal system as MPs rampage through the carefully crafted compromises of the ministerial Budget process. That vastly overstates what they are asking for, they suggest.
Some Treasury officials are sceptical of Parliament’s capacity to play a meaningful role, saying MPs consistently fail to make full use of their existing powers. ”Each year they say it will be different, and each year it is the same,” said one.
It is a charge that is conceded by even staunch supporters of change. ”It is part of Parliament’s weakness,” Hogan said.
Treasury spokesperson Thoraya Pandy said the department was not opposed to change. ”We want to engage Parliament on this issue rather than pre-empt what they are going to do … we think Parliament needs to play a stronger role.”