President Cyril Ramaphosa delivering the Opening of Parliament Address (OPA) at a joint sitting of Parliament held at the Cape Town City Hall on July 18, 2024. Given the new political milieu brought about by the Government of National Unity, a change in the President’s relationship with Parliament will not be far-fetched, says the writer. Picture: Kopano Tlape, GCIS
Prof. Dirk Kotzé
THE President’s accountability to Parliament has become again a topic of discussion. What does it imply?
Constitutional principles such as the separation of powers establish checks and balances between the Executive and Legislative powers. In parliamentary systems, such separation is not water-tight and in South Africa, it is even more complex.
The national president is not directly elected (such as now in the US) but is elected by Parliament immediately after a national election or when a vacancy arises. The President is not a member of Parliament but can be removed by a parliamentary motion of no confidence or impeachment. The president must also regularly answer questions in Parliament. It is therefore similar to the position of a prime minister in a parliamentary system.
When we look at the other members of the national executive – ministers and deputy ministers – they must be members of the National Assembly. For each of their ministries or departments, the National Assembly established a portfolio committee consisting of all the parliamentary parties. Parliament’s National Council of Provinces has a similar arrangement. Only one executive office does not have such an arrangement – the Office of the President, which includes the Deputy President.
For several years, opposition parties campaigned for a portfolio committee for the Presidency. In June 2022, the IFP chief whip Narend Singh tabled it again in Parliament’s Rule Committee. After the 2024 national election, this committee resolved to establish the Subcommittee on the Review of National Assembly Rules chaired by the ANC’s Doris Dlakude. Its mandate includes investigating a committee overseeing the Presidency.
The ANC’s parliamentary caucus dismissed the idea on 3 November 2024. In the Rules Committee, the ANC argued that it would result in a duplication of functions in lieu of the Zondo Commission’s caveat that such a portfolio committee can be justified only if it does not result in duplication.
The caucus therefore argued that the current arrangements in the President’s relationship with Parliament are sufficient. It refers to the quarterly presidential question-and-answer sessions in both parliamentary houses, and the fact that the budget of the President’s office is tabled and approved in the National Assembly.
It also argues that the main responsibilities of the Presidency are included in several existing portfolio committees. They are Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation (with its own committee), the Government Communication and Information System (GCIS) overseen by the Communications and Digital Technologies portfolio committee, Intelligence (State Security) as well as Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities monitored by their own portfolio committees, and the Special Investigative Unit monitored by the Select Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA).
This argument leads us to a closer look at the presidency's composition. It could possibly provide an answer for the focus of a new portfolio committee.
Firstly, the Presidency includes the offices of the President and Deputy President.
Secondly, it includes a general Minister in the Presidency in Khumbudzo Ntshavheni.
Thirdly, it includes the Minister in the Presidency for Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation Maropene Ramokgopa and her deputy ministers.
Fourthly, the Minister in the Presidency for Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities Sindisiwe Chikunga and her deputies (with its own parliamentary portfolio committee) are also part of it.
The ANC caucus’s argument is therefore partly correct. The parliamentary committees reach all the executive members of the Presidency, except the President, Deputy President and the general Minister.
What is the missing component in the current dispensation and is there a role for a new portfolio committee?
Parliamentary portfolio committees play different roles. The first is to enable parliamentary oversight of the responsible ministry and line-function department. Annual plans of action, budgets and their implementation must be explained to the parliamentarians. Where problems emerge or media exposures become headlines, the responsible persons must explain to the committee. That includes the conduct of ministers and senior officials. Financial issues are often also investigated by SCOPA.
Preparing new legislation and the related public participation are related responsibilities of portfolio committees.
What makes the President unique, is that the incumbent is the only member of the Executive who is directly elected (by Parliament and not by the voters) in that position. The Deputy President and cabinet members are appointed by the President.
The President has therefore a special responsibility to account to Parliament for his or her actions. Over and above the line-management responsibilities of the Presidency (such as Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, State Security or GCIS), presidents ought to account to Parliament about matters affecting the President directly. They include personal conduct and matters of national concern. Issues of the past such as Nkandla, the Arms Deal, State Capture or Phala Phala could have been approached in the spirit of parliamentary accountability before it entered the legal-judicial phase.
A motion of no confidence or impeachment are not preventive measures and becomes an option only when it is actually too late, and when the executive-legislature relationship has already been severely compromised.
The Presidency is a massive organ of the state – it occupies now the entire Union Buildings. In the past, Presidents were criticized for accumulating too much power in their office and concentrating too many executive functions on them. In theory, it can be disentangled for accountability so that some of these executive functions are located with specific portfolio committees.
Such a decentralization of accountability is possible, but then it begs the question of why in the first instance they were grouped in the Presidency and what role the Presidency plays in their functioning. Take for example the role the President and his Office play in international relations and diplomacy.
For parliamentary purposes, the Minister and Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) must account to the DIRCO portfolio committee while in reality much of it should be done by the Presidency to their own portfolio committee. Why is Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation part of the Presidency but not DIRCO?
Given the new political milieu brought about by the GNU, a change in the President’s relationship with Parliament will not be far-fetched. In line with the same logic, should it not be replicated also with the premiers and provincial legislatures?
* Prof. Dirk Kotzé is based at the Department of Political Sciences, Unisa.
** The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of The African.