Statement Of The Annual National Lekgotla Of The Parliamentary Caucus Of The African National Congress

22 October 2009

The 52ND National Conference of the ANC held in Polokwane in 2007 was a watershed for the renewal of core values, principles and culture of the ANC and thus reaffirmed the ANC as a social force for unity, selfless service, collective leadership, democratic centralism, humility, honesty, hard-work, constructive criticism and self-criticism, discipline and mutual respect.

Our first Lekgotla in the fourth democratic Parliament derived its vision and mission from the resolutions of the Polokwane Conference which reaffirmed the role of the ANC as a broad church, established to serve all the people. This conference further reaffirmed that "the task of all ANC members is to serve the people loyally and selflessly, without expectation of material reward or personal gain". The Strategy and Tactics Document which was adopted at this conference makes it clear that the ANC is a unifying force that seeks to mobilise all South Africans to contribute to the ongoing transformation of our country.

Mindful of and informed by the Polokwane resolutions, we held our Lekgotla Plenary Session on 03 - 04 September 2009. The Deputy President of the ANC, Cde Kgalema Motlanthe delivered the opening address at this session and sharpened our political consciousness when he reminded us that our work should be informed by our conference resolutions, the ANC constitution as well as the Strategic and Tactics document which states that ANC`s role in society is to unite all the people. The Deputy President asserted that this role has practical implications to the work that we do on day to day basis, which means even as we think about and deal with deployments, we must be informed by the understanding that strategically our goal is to unite all of our people. Therefore the steps that we take must advance us towards the attainment of this unity of all of our people.

Taking the cue from the Deputy President, all our commissions focusing on various areas of the Lekgotla have been underpinned by the moral values and vision of our organisation as enshrined in our political program of all times - the Freedom Charter. Of fundamental importance in our areas of work as Parliamentarians is the Freedom Charter`s principle that the People Shall Govern.

In order to promote the People Shall Govern principle, one of the outcomes of this Lekgotla is that we will champion the transformation of the fourth democratic Parliament into an activist Parliament. One of the defining features of an activist Parliament is that it seeks to involve all its citizens in issues of governance for better service delivery and accountability.

Our Lekgotla has generated progressive mechanisms through which we will play a meaningful role in supporting and promoting the turn around strategy of local government so that there will be pro-active means of dealing with service delivery issues before these escalate into violent protests and strikes.

It is our firm view that these service delivery protests are a reminder to us that we need to work together across the three spheres of government to extend quality and affordable services to historically marginalised communities. This responsibility must be located within the context of the democratic breakthrough of 1994 and the continuing transformation of our society.

One of the key resolutions taken at this Lekgotla is that we will develop a national co-operative governance framework for the legislative arms of the State. The importance of this framework is underscored by the fact that over the years we have attached a narrow interpretation to the concept of co-operative governance. We should remember that we have three branches of government, that is, the executive, the judiciary and legislature.

Within the executive and judiciary arms of government there are clear and coherent mechanisms of co-operative governance. In the legislative arm of the State, the concept and practice of co-operative governance is not well-developed. Our interpretation of co-operative governance in the legislative and oversight arm of government must start from the premise that the legislature has the national, provincial and local spheres which are interconnected, interrelated and interdependent.

Parliament as the national legislature is made of the National Assembly and the National Council of Provinces. These two houses make out Parliament which is a sovereign institution representing the people of South Africa as a whole, black and white.

This interconnected, interrelated and interdependent relationship of the Caucuses requires the institutionalization of the concept of co-operative governance within the legislative arm of government and creation of mechanisms for interface between Caucuses and constitutional structures of the ruling party. This will be achieved through a co-operative governance framework which we will develop and published in due course.

At his meeting with executive mayors and mayors to discuss improving service delivery in municipalities which took place in Khayelitsha, President Jacob Zuma said that "The municipalities are the first door that our people knock on when they need assistance from government. When people are frustrated with the slow movement of the wheel of government they engage municipalities before other spheres. Citizens also blame municipalities for functions that they have no direct control over. For example, municipalities are blamed for dysfunctional schools, poor service at hospitals and the slow pace of building houses. These are of course responsibilities of other spheres of government. But for our people, local government is the first door of government they know, and sometimes the only door that they can reach".

To speed-up service delivery and deal with related issues timeously and in a pro-active manner our Lekgotla identified the need for the integration and co-ordination of service delivery programs including oversight thereof across the three spheres of government. For this purpose, we are already in the process of re-aligning, rationalising and transforming Parliamentary Constituency Offices (PCOs) into one-stop centres through which MPs, MPLs and Councillors will work together in addressing service delivery issues at local levels.

These one-stop PCOs will be important forums through which public representatives deployed by the ANC to the executive and legislative arms of government will interface with constitutional structures of the ANC including our Alliance Partners, SANCO, ANC Youth League, ANC Women`s League and the MKMVA. This will result in greater co-ordination and integration of service delivery programs and collective accountability by public representatives at the three spheres of government. We will thus be able to share the responsibility of service delivery, accountability and oversight across the three spheres of government.

Our Lekgotla was very successful in positioning ourselves to play a leading role as the Majority Party in Parliament which sets out the Agenda for the National Assembly. We believe we are well-positioned to play a central role in the renewal and recovery of values of caring, cohesive and sustainable communities.

On Governance and Monitoring:

The Lekgotla welcomed the presentations made by the Speaker of the National Assembly and Chairperson of the National Council of Provinces on the strategic priorities of Parliament for the next five years. It is the view of the Lekgotla that the fourth Parliament must strengthen its activist character and deepen its responsiveness to the needs of the people.

The oversight model, developed during the last term of Parliament, must be adapted to the strategic priorities of this current Parliament to ensure that the institution is better positioned to bring into concrete reality the aspirations of our people. Linked to this activist character of Parliament is our resolve to ensure that oversight work is enhanced, particularly through parliamentary constituency work. It is our view that government programmes relating to service delivery, which radically improves the lives of our people, if properly executed, will require application of creative measures in the process of their monitoring and assessment.

It is in this regard that the Lekgotla affirmed the ongoing programme of transforming Parliamentary Constituency Offices into effective and efficient oversight structures. This process will see national and provincial constituency offices merging resources and establishing inclusive management committees responsible for the running of the PCOs. The synchronisation of the work of MPs, provincial legislators and councillors at the level of communities is necessary in enhancing our capacity to perform oversight and monitoring over government to ensure that it delivers on its mandate.

We also reaffirmed our commitment to lead and drive the process of unifying the administrations in the three spheres of government into a Single Public Service. The Lekgotla also expressed concern at the excessive use of consultants in certain government departments. We felt the practice in some departments, where a large proportion of their budget is dedicated to consultants, may amount to wasteful expenditure and should be minimised through regulatory mechanisms.

The Lekgotla also resolved to ensure that Parliament plays its part in expediting and strengthening policy prescripts and frameworks aimed at eliminating unethical and corrupt behaviour by public representatives and officials. This will, amongst other things, involve urgently implementing vetting strategies to root out and expose criminal elements from the public service. The 52 National Conference of the ANC noted that public service to the people of South Africa is a revolutionary duty of all cadres of the ANC that should be executed with dedication and selflessness, in particular by those deployed to serve in executives, legislatures and the public service at all levels. The rampant and selfish quest for personal wealth undermines the values and revolutionary morality of the national democratic society we seek to build.

We have noted a call for the amendment of Parliamentary rules with a view to make it compulsory for members of the Executive to account on the expenditure relating to the departments they lead to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. Caucus is not averse to Ministers accounting to the relevant Parliamentary Portfolio Committees. The current practice is that officials account to SCOPA as they are involved in the day-to-day administration of their departments` finances. We believe that this needs to be discussed further.

On Economic Transformation:

Having deliberated extensively on the input by Minister Chabane on government`s approach to the improvement of performance at all levels of governance, the Lekgotla was of a view that the state`s planning capacity has been very weak and needs to be strengthened. In this regard, we resolved to form a task-team of the Economic Transformation Cluster to evaluate both Green Papers on Monitoring, Evaluation and Planning. The terms of reference for the task-team will include identifying the weaknesses and shortcomings with regards to co-ordination and planning. The task-team must also identify a program to promote the development of a short-, medium- and longer term plan in all spheres of government. The Lekgotla, particularly welcomed the proposal of the Green Paper, which empowers the President to dismiss non-performing public representatives and other government officials, as critical in enforcing performance and accountability.

The Lekgotla noted that the country`s policy focus on labour intensive methods of production, which it believes is narrow in scope and should be reviewed to include the structural needs of the economy and industrial diversification. There was a feeling that due to the insufficient link between the structural needs of the economy and labour skills, hearings must be conducted with universities to ensure that higher education does not abdicate its responsibilities to cover the gaps where secondary education has failed and also to look into reviewing the education curriculum towards meeting the demands of the economy. We also noted the absorption problems of internship programs and resolved to engage the department on this matter as an employment measure and a strategy towards filling the large number of vacant posts in the public service. The Lekgotla further reiterated the need to ban labour brokers.

The Lekgotla has noted the need to speed up the implementation of the Money Bills Amendment Procedure and Related Matters Act. Having established a political task-team to look at the implementation process for the Money Bills Act, we will also fast track the development of appropriate rules and procedures, and develop a training course for Members on economic literacy with an accredited university.

On Peace and Security:

The Lekgotla reaffirmed that crime in the country is a major national challenge and that indeed the battle against crime and corruption needs to be stepped up. We noted and endorsed government`s crime fighting interventions, which includes the
proposed amendment to Section 49 of the Criminal Procedure Act of 1977. If implemented properly, together with many other crime fighting mechanisms, the Act will enable law enforcement agencies to deal appropriately with violent crimes and thereby drastically minimize the levels of crime and corruption in this country.

For our part, we will over the next five years ensure, amongst others, that the police specialized Units such as Sexual Offences, Family and Child Protection Units are reintroduced and strengthened, the loss of dockets and manipulation of statistics are eliminated, the capacity of the Directorate of Priority Crimes Investigations (DPCI) to combat organized crime and corruption is strengthened, and that the cooperation between SAPS and Home Affairs is strengthened, particularly in relation to the border control to combat transnational crime and smuggling syndicates.

On Social Transformation:

The Lekgotla reaffirmed the ANC`s commitment to protect and build on the gains of the last 15 years of governance, particularly in relation to the improvement of the conditions and quality of life of our people. Consistent with our belief and commitment to human dignity for all our people, we remain unshaken in our resolve to ensure that the state plays a major role in meeting the legitimate expectations of all, especially the poor, disadvantaged and other vulnerable persons.

Inline with the ANC`s pledge to promote health and access to quality affordable health care, we will ensure the implementation of the National Health Insurance Fund, which will provide the right of all to access quality health care. This process will entail processes such as public hearings; legislation and an international study tour to countries with NHI systems.

On education, the Lekgotla felt that Parliament, in conjunction with the Department of Arts and Culture should initiate a process that will ensure that Indigenous languages are promoted at all schools, with the intention being that learners are taught in their mother tongue.

We also resolved that institutions of higher learning and student bodies must be engaged, urgently with a view, to deal with the causes of the high rate of drop outs and its impact on students enrolled at these institutions.

We will also encourage institutions of higher learning to drastically increase their intake and the creation of an environment that is sensitive to students with disabilities. Linked to this is the promotion and protection of people living with disabilities and ensuring that Parliament leads by example, by improving on its existing measures to assist and care for disabled MPs, staff and visitors.

On Sports, the Lekgotla resolved to engage sporting organisations, particularly the South African Football Association and the Local Organising Committee to discuss ways in which Parliament can play an active role in ensuring the success of the 2010 World Cup. The interaction between representatives of SAFA, LOC and FIFA with Parliament as well as the display of the FIFA Confederations Cup trophy in the institution earlier this year reflects the importance of the relationship between sport and Parliament, as these two belong to the people.

Issued by
The Office of the Chief Whip of the ANC
ANC Parliamentary Caucus
Parliament of the Republic of SA

Enquiries:
Moloto Mothapo 082 370 6930

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