/ 27 March 2013

How Parliament shafts the people

How Parliament Shafts The People

Parliament has been a hive of activity since the start of the year, with President Jacob Zuma's State of the Nation address, the budget and busy committees setting a fast pace. 

But there is still the feeling that Parliament and the provincial legislatures are becoming irrelevant. It is no secret that political power does not reside in Parliament. Our electoral system amplifies the voices of party bosses and drowns out their lower-ranking colleagues, not to mention the voices of citizens. Opaque party funding practices and back-room deals seem to favour patronage at the expense of citizens.

Many committed MPs engage, abide by and advance the Constitution but their dedication is tested by party discipline. Like most of the world, our democratic institutions are ruled by elite-dominated real-politik. The visionary quest of 1994 for a democracy that is about more than regular elections has less space.

The ANC's Mangaung conference in December resolved to develop "activist and people-centred" legislatures and it certainly sounds the right note. But it will have little meaning without efforts to address deficits in political accountability.

Other Mangaung resolutions further erode the legislatures' ability to make decisions on the basis of wide-ranging, inclusive debates. They mandate a bigger role for the ANC in the legislatures' human resources and structural processes – they strengthen the chief whips and the ANC's political committees.

Instead, parties should consider how to deepen debate within their caucuses and how to build internal democracy.

Developing initiatives
Commendable initiatives from the legislatures could enhance their capacity and functioning. These include developing an oversight model and initiatives to improve participation in committees. The current process to develop a framework for public participation is welcome, as is the recent announcement of the (overdue) establishment of an office to assist MPs with budget processes. 

But systems-oriented solutions alone won't resolve the existing political problems.

The wide range of formal mechanisms for public engagement with our legislatures results in relatively good levels of participation compared with other legislatures in Africa. A number of portfolio committees now regularly hold public hearings or invite submissions on annual reports and budgets as well as legislation. Our legislatures are extending their reach more often with road shows and hearings in towns. 

These mechanisms are necessary, but do they result in significant shifts to political agendas?

Engagement with the legislatures, especially in the committees, remains the terrain of resourced elites from the private sector, academia and organised civil society. Citizen groups are invited to the road shows but invitations sometimes fail to reach even mass-based organisations such as the Treatment Action Campaign. 

The people most affected by legislative and oversight decisions are still largely excluded. Where there are local participation initiatives, the value placed on public inputs is highly questionable.

Disregard and even disdain for citizens' views seem common to all political parties. At a recent workshop, a Khayelitsha activist summed it up: "We'll tell them something but they've already decided something else."

'Sectoral parliaments'
The truth of this was made starkly clear after public hearings in rural towns on the Traditional Courts Bill last year, hearings at which citizens overwhelmingly called for the Bill to be scrapped. A significant number of the provincial legislatures heeded the call but the relevant committee at the National Council of Provinces sidestepped it by not engaging with the provincial mandates. In this case, relatively good participation, led by the provincial legislatures, made no difference.

The costly "sectoral parliaments" also falter in the face of politics. Last year's "women's parliament" was a disgrace: more than R1-million was spent on it, it is claimed, but many seasoned women's organisations and rural activists failed to get invitations. A resolution adopted at the event to oppose the Bill simply vanished from the gathering's final statement.

The agenda and the terms of citizen engagement are almost exclusively defined by the legislatures, not citizens. MPs and MPLs need to "put on their boots and tekkies", as Vuyiseka Dubula phrased it at last year's people's parliament civil-society conference – they need to boot up and engage citizens on the terms set by aggrieved communities.

The chorus of voices demanding meaningful political participation, a debate on our electoral system and regulation of political party funding is growing louder. It is to the detriment of our democracy that Parliament continues to dismiss these calls.

Keren Ben-Zeev is deputy director of the Heinrich Böll Foundation and Sam Waterhouse is the parliamentary programme coordinator at the community law centre at the University of the Western Cape.