Parliament of South Africa
Parliament of South Africa
08/20/2024 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 08/20/2024 06:39
Speech of the Chairperson of the National Council of Provinces, Honourable Refilwe Mtshweni-Tsipane, on the Workshop for Chief Whips and Chairpersons of Committees
Date: 20 - 21 August 2024 Venue: Cape Sun Hotel Time: 09H00
_____________________________________________________________
Former Chairperson of the National Council of Provinces,
House Chairpersons of the National Council of Provinces
Deputy President of the South African Local Government Association
Deputy Minister for Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation
Speakers of Provincial Legislatures
Chief Whips and Deputy Chief Whips of Provincial Legislatures
Distinguished Guests,
Good Morning,
It is with great pleasure that I am afforded the opportunity to deliver the Keynote Address to the National Council of Province's Whips and Chairpersons two-day workshop. We are convening under the compelling theme of "Defining our collective effort in Realising the Mandate of the NCOP"; which characterizes the necessity of this conjuncture, as we collectively craft our methods and systems for our term of office.
Gathered today, is the official think tank and engine room to reflect on the core business of the NCOP, which must ensure a comprehensive response to our unique function, as outlined in the Constitution, to ensure provincial interests are taken into account in the national sphere of government. We are equally tasked, with the responsibility to promote national unity, through cooperative governance and intergovernmental relations, across all three spheres of government.
As we embark on this new journey, we must underline the importance of this workshop, as an enabler to develop common practices, approaches and standards, towards cohesively weaving together the activities of the NCOP. Your valued contribution from the inception of this planning phase, shall determine the prospects for our individual and collective successes.
In this respect, the chief aim as outlined in the programme, intends to empower Whips and Chairpersons of Committees, to effectively execute the expectations that underlie their responsibilities. Thus, in our business, we must engender the political culture that promotes collective action, complementary actions and interrelatedness, constitutive of the discipline of public service.
In this way, this NCOP must embrace being caught up in a network of mutuality; tied to a single garment of destiny. To illustrate this injunction, Martin Luther King Jnr opined; "I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be; and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be."
In this respect, our values should never be shelved in our homes, and disavowed when we enter the parliamentary assembly. CLR James, said, "I have no conception of home; home is where I find myself most happy doing political work."
To this end, our quest for truth shall be the basis for conversations and contestation, understanding that wisdom is a product of the very process of dialogue. The overarching political imperatives that constitute our mandate is to ensure that our people from the places where they live, are equally guaranteed a capable, ethical, developmental state, that intervenes directly in government's programme for social transformation and delivery of services.
A CHANGING POLITICAL LANDSCAPE POST-2024 NPE
To this end, we are gathered to enact ways that will sharpen the role of the NCOP in its broad mandate, in ways that better confront the underlying contradictions plaguing of society, following the 2024 National and Provincial Elections. It has become common knowledge that we are in a defining moment of the transition, 30 years into South Africa's democratic dispensation. This is taking place, under conditions not of our choosing, as Anthony Farley elaborated that, the beginning is never remembered.
We are thus confronted with relative shifts in the national psyche around the prospects and meaning of our democracy. Over the past few months of elections, various questions were insurgent, that are testing the meaning of our democracy and the promise to build a non-racial, non-sexist democratic and prosperous South Africa. These have included a re-questioning of the Constitutional order, and its ability to lead the process of social and economic transformation.
We have also seen a rise in elements of populism, ethnic-mobilization, political polarization, liberal fundamentalism, and all forms of politics, that not only threaten democratic institutions, but the very notion of truth.
Thus, the NCOP must inform discussions towards the upcoming national dialogue, which will underline the necessity of liberation, as a process in motion, rather than an event, a goal or an outcome. We are to this extent, confronted with a society in a paradox. This is an environment constitutive of continuities and discontinuities from colonial apartheid to a constitutionalist present.
It is a divided society with levels of inequality that deepen social alienation of those at the bottom-end of our society --- a clear indication of political equality that hasn't translated into social, economic, cultural and structural equality. Consequently, we are charged with constituting mechanisms that are more attendant to the lived experience of the working class and poor.
These are what Sara Motta refers to as liminal subjects, prone to conditions of living death and premature death. To this extent, she challenges us to assert a more dignified and restorative pathway to well-being and justice; that re-imagine more holistic and caring ways of politics, democracy and economy. Thus, the Government of National Unity (GNU) has prioritized three areas aimed at the redress of high levels of joblessness, ensure inclusive economic growth, reduce high cost of living and build a capable, ethical and developmental state.
ONE : BUILDING AN ACTIVIST OVERSIGHT AGENDA FOR THE NCOP
As outlined during my Policy Debate, the work of Oversight must strengthen accountability mechanisms and systems to enable this arm of the state to assert itself. Our current conjuncture, of multiple, interrelated and interconnected crises, requires a paradigm shift, that initiates an Activist Oversight Agenda for the NCOP, that embraces the spirit of the GNU and its statement of intent, which reminds us of Fidel Castro, when he said; "Everything within the revolution and nothing against the revolution".
In this vein, our parliamentary oversight must give effect to the President's call to leave no one behind, whose main content must stress that the free development of each as the condition for the free development of all. It must also engender a state that deliberately pursues specific interests that refashions new possibilities, against the enclosure of a liberal state without a point of view and pursuing general interests.
Aime Cessaire indicates that, "A civilization that proves incapable of solving the problems it creates is a decadent civilization; a civilization that closes its eyes to its most crucial problems is a stricken civilization; and a civilization that uses principles of trickery and deceit is a dying civilization".
To this end, this moment requires that we re-energize the work of Committees as an ethic of liberation, that structures oversight differently. Its overall intention as Ngugi Wa Thiongo elucidates, "that we see things clearly". To see clearly is not only to look, but to unmask possible falsities. It is to see differently, to see what is not visible, and to do things otherwise, indistinctive ways, which thinks from the point of those who are oppressed. This means an Oversight agenda, which goes against the grain without any fear, favor or prejudice.
In this accordance, we must consolidate our previous successes on high rates of both oral and written replies highlighting the effectiveness of parliamentary oversight, whilst allowing new possibilities that script, read and think anew. I am therefore calling for a rupture from what apartheid activist, Rick Turner called the problem of "common sense thinking" and technocratic wisdom, to other forms of knowing, that create a better future.
In this way, reject notions that suggest politics as an art of the possible to politics as the art of the impossible. Our challenges therefore are not innate, they can be addressed; as they are a result of social relationships, which emerged from our collective human choices.
Thus, our workshop must take stock of the reflections from the Zondo Commission and its assessment and critique of parliamentary oversight and a weakening state. It must harmonize the Three- Sphere Planning processes to strategically reshape our Oversight agenda. Further, it must strengthen as a matter of urgency intergovernmental and cooperative governance that ensure an interventionist and more proactive NCOP. It must Institutionalise Policy and Legislative Review as outlined in my Policy Debate, to consistently test the impact and efficacy of the policies and legislation passed by Parliament.
To achieve this will require that we re-invigorate our systems and build capabilities of our political and administrative organs. It calls for a comprehensive attack on mediocrity in service delivery and maladministration. It calls for the systemic unmasking of corrupt activities, corrupt networks and corrupt persons in both the private and public sectors. Lastly, calls for the NCOP to be actively diligent, leaving no stone unturned.
TWO : BUILDING ORGANS OF PEOPLE'S POWER THROUGH PUBLIC PARTICIPATION
Honourable Members,
Public Participation is the entry point for our people to access parliamentary work and partake in the administration of the country, as envisioned by the Freedom Charter. It is an important vehicle to ensure effective oversight and law making, driven by the people from the ground up.
We need to rebuild a new dynamism that re-enacts organs of people's power. The public needs to become re-energized across all spheres of government to promote more ongoing civic involvement in public affairs.
A matter of significant concern in the NCOP is the number of bills that were pushed through over the past financial year without the necessary public participation. This shortcoming has resulted in numerous court challenges, which have not only strained our legal resources but also incurred substantial legal costs. Many were settled out court, due to weaknesses in public participation during legislative processes.
It is therefore imperative that we highlight this shortcoming for interventions, in approach to governance and civil engagement. Sipho Seepe, in an article for business day in 2007, during the NCOP Summit on Intergovernmental Relations, as part the 10-year celebrations since its establishment, made the observation that delegates were to identify mechanisms to strengthen the role that the NCOP should play in promoting sound intergovernmental relations over next decade.
In response, delegates were reminded that the establishment of the NCOP and provincial legislatures were transformational innovations brought, in order to deepen democracy in the legislative and governance processes of the country. We accordingly must assess whether these questions are still persistent; Whether the NCOP has given sufficient effect to broadening popular democracy?
THREE; STRENTHENING SOLIDARITY AND PROGRESSIVE INTERNATIONALISM
Our business continues to be affected by ongoing trends in the global and regional context. These are underpinned by a global matrix of power that is authorizing asymmetrical power relations between countries of the global North as the center and the global South as the periphery.
The impact of the geopolitical tension structured by contestation between interests for a unipolar world against emergent multipolarity of the world, through formations like the BRICS, are providing alternative anti-imperial forms of worlding. We must continue to play an effective role in inter-parliamentary and international bodies, under the vision of building a better Africa, a better Africa guided by principles of solidarity with the oppressed people of the world and the pursuit of progressive internationalism.
To this end, we must affirm the clarion call that another world is possible. In Conclusion, allow me once again to underline CLR James' contention on American Civilization, an assertion that captures our moment, when he asserted; "the mass of population had become so distressed by the failure of the promise of liberal democracy that they were prepared to give up on it and elect instead to live vicariously through violently amoral political heroes. To this extent, the great masses of the people no longer feared power; they were ready to allocate power to anyone who seems ready to do their bidding. Making society vulnerable to totalitarianism…
I thank you.
_____________________________________________________________
Former Chairperson of the National Council of Provinces,
House Chairpersons of the National Council of Provinces
Deputy President of the South African Local Government Association
Deputy Minister for Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation
Speakers of Provincial Legislatures
Chief Whips and Deputy Chief Whips of Provincial Legislatures
Distinguished Guests,
Good Morning,
It is with great pleasure that I am afforded the opportunity to deliver the Keynote Address to the National Council of Province's Whips and Chairpersons two-day workshop. We are convening under the compelling theme of "Defining our collective effort in Realising the Mandate of the NCOP"; which characterizes the necessity of this conjuncture, as we collectively craft our methods and systems for our term of office.
Gathered today, is the official think tank and engine room to reflect on the core business of the NCOP, which must ensure a comprehensive response to our unique function, as outlined in the Constitution, to ensure provincial interests are taken into account in the national sphere of government. We are equally tasked, with the responsibility to promote national unity, through cooperative governance and intergovernmental relations, across all three spheres of government.
As we embark on this new journey, we must underline the importance of this workshop, as an enabler to develop common practices, approaches and standards, towards cohesively weaving together the activities of the NCOP. Your valued contribution from the inception of this planning phase, shall determine the prospects for our individual and collective successes.
In this respect, the chief aim as outlined in the programme, intends to empower Whips and Chairpersons of Committees, to effectively execute the expectations that underlie their responsibilities. Thus, in our business, we must engender the political culture that promotes collective action, complementary actions and interrelatedness, constitutive of the discipline of public service.
In this way, this NCOP must embrace being caught up in a network of mutuality; tied to a single garment of destiny. To illustrate this injunction, Martin Luther King Jnr opined; "I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be; and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be."
In this respect, our values should never be shelved in our homes, and disavowed when we enter the parliamentary assembly. CLR James, said, "I have no conception of home; home is where I find myself most happy doing political work."
To this end, our quest for truth shall be the basis for conversations and contestation, understanding that wisdom is a product of the very process of dialogue. The overarching political imperatives that constitute our mandate is to ensure that our people from the places where they live, are equally guaranteed a capable, ethical, developmental state, that intervenes directly in government's programme for social transformation and delivery of services.
A CHANGING POLITICAL LANDSCAPE POST-2024 NPE
To this end, we are gathered to enact ways that will sharpen the role of the NCOP in its broad mandate, in ways that better confront the underlying contradictions plaguing of society, following the 2024 National and Provincial Elections. It has become common knowledge that we are in a defining moment of the transition, 30 years into South Africa's democratic dispensation. This is taking place, under conditions not of our choosing, as Anthony Farley elaborated that, the beginning is never remembered.
We are thus confronted with relative shifts in the national psyche around the prospects and meaning of our democracy. Over the past few months of elections, various questions were insurgent, that are testing the meaning of our democracy and the promise to build a non-racial, non-sexist democratic and prosperous South Africa. These have included a re-questioning of the Constitutional order, and its ability to lead the process of social and economic transformation.
We have also seen a rise in elements of populism, ethnic-mobilization, political polarization, liberal fundamentalism, and all forms of politics, that not only threaten democratic institutions, but the very notion of truth.
Thus, the NCOP must inform discussions towards the upcoming national dialogue, which will underline the necessity of liberation, as a process in motion, rather than an event, a goal or an outcome. We are to this extent, confronted with a society in a paradox. This is an environment constitutive of continuities and discontinuities from colonial apartheid to a constitutionalist present.
It is a divided society with levels of inequality that deepen social alienation of those at the bottom-end of our society --- a clear indication of political equality that hasn't translated into social, economic, cultural and structural equality. Consequently, we are charged with constituting mechanisms that are more attendant to the lived experience of the working class and poor.
These are what Sara Motta refers to as liminal subjects, prone to conditions of living death and premature death. To this extent, she challenges us to assert a more dignified and restorative pathway to well-being and justice; that re-imagine more holistic and caring ways of politics, democracy and economy. Thus, the Government of National Unity (GNU) has prioritized three areas aimed at the redress of high levels of joblessness, ensure inclusive economic growth, reduce high cost of living and build a capable, ethical and developmental state.
ONE : BUILDING AN ACTIVIST OVERSIGHT AGENDA FOR THE NCOP
As outlined during my Policy Debate, the work of Oversight must strengthen accountability mechanisms and systems to enable this arm of the state to assert itself. Our current conjuncture, of multiple, interrelated and interconnected crises, requires a paradigm shift, that initiates an Activist Oversight Agenda for the NCOP, that embraces the spirit of the GNU and its statement of intent, which reminds us of Fidel Castro, when he said; "Everything within the revolution and nothing against the revolution".
In this vein, our parliamentary oversight must give effect to the President's call to leave no one behind, whose main content must stress that the free development of each as the condition for the free development of all. It must also engender a state that deliberately pursues specific interests that refashions new possibilities, against the enclosure of a liberal state without a point of view and pursuing general interests.
Aime Cessaire indicates that, "A civilization that proves incapable of solving the problems it creates is a decadent civilization; a civilization that closes its eyes to its most crucial problems is a stricken civilization; and a civilization that uses principles of trickery and deceit is a dying civilization".
To this end, this moment requires that we re-energize the work of Committees as an ethic of liberation, that structures oversight differently. Its overall intention as Ngugi Wa Thiongo elucidates, "that we see things clearly". To see clearly is not only to look, but to unmask possible falsities. It is to see differently, to see what is not visible, and to do things otherwise, indistinctive ways, which thinks from the point of those who are oppressed. This means an Oversight agenda, which goes against the grain without any fear, favor or prejudice.
In this accordance, we must consolidate our previous successes on high rates of both oral and written replies highlighting the effectiveness of parliamentary oversight, whilst allowing new possibilities that script, read and think anew. I am therefore calling for a rupture from what apartheid activist, Rick Turner called the problem of "common sense thinking" and technocratic wisdom, to other forms of knowing, that create a better future.
In this way, reject notions that suggest politics as an art of the possible to politics as the art of the impossible. Our challenges therefore are not innate, they can be addressed; as they are a result of social relationships, which emerged from our collective human choices.
Thus, our workshop must take stock of the reflections from the Zondo Commission and its assessment and critique of parliamentary oversight and a weakening state. It must harmonize the Three- Sphere Planning processes to strategically reshape our Oversight agenda. Further, it must strengthen as a matter of urgency intergovernmental and cooperative governance that ensure an interventionist and more proactive NCOP. It must Institutionalise Policy and Legislative Review as outlined in my Policy Debate, to consistently test the impact and efficacy of the policies and legislation passed by Parliament.
To achieve this will require that we re-invigorate our systems and build capabilities of our political and administrative organs. It calls for a comprehensive attack on mediocrity in service delivery and maladministration. It calls for the systemic unmasking of corrupt activities, corrupt networks and corrupt persons in both the private and public sectors. Lastly, calls for the NCOP to be actively diligent, leaving no stone unturned.
TWO : BUILDING ORGANS OF PEOPLE'S POWER THROUGH PUBLIC PARTICIPATION
Honourable Members,
Public Participation is the entry point for our people to access parliamentary work and partake in the administration of the country, as envisioned by the Freedom Charter. It is an important vehicle to ensure effective oversight and law making, driven by the people from the ground up.
We need to rebuild a new dynamism that re-enacts organs of people's power. The public needs to become re-energized across all spheres of government to promote more ongoing civic involvement in public affairs.
A matter of significant concern in the NCOP is the number of bills that were pushed through over the past financial year without the necessary public participation. This shortcoming has resulted in numerous court challenges, which have not only strained our legal resources but also incurred substantial legal costs. Many were settled out court, due to weaknesses in public participation during legislative processes.
It is therefore imperative that we highlight this shortcoming for interventions, in approach to governance and civil engagement. Sipho Seepe, in an article for business day in 2007, during the NCOP Summit on Intergovernmental Relations, as part the 10-year celebrations since its establishment, made the observation that delegates were to identify mechanisms to strengthen the role that the NCOP should play in promoting sound intergovernmental relations over next decade.
In response, delegates were reminded that the establishment of the NCOP and provincial legislatures were transformational innovations brought, in order to deepen democracy in the legislative and governance processes of the country. We accordingly must assess whether these questions are still persistent; Whether the NCOP has given sufficient effect to broadening popular democracy?
THREE; STRENTHENING SOLIDARITY AND PROGRESSIVE INTERNATIONALISM
Our business continues to be affected by ongoing trends in the global and regional context. These are underpinned by a global matrix of power that is authorizing asymmetrical power relations between countries of the global North as the center and the global South as the periphery.
The impact of the geopolitical tension structured by contestation between interests for a unipolar world against emergent multipolarity of the world, through formations like the BRICS, are providing alternative anti-imperial forms of worlding. We must continue to play an effective role in inter-parliamentary and international bodies, under the vision of building a better Africa, a better Africa guided by principles of solidarity with the oppressed people of the world and the pursuit of progressive internationalism.
To this end, we must affirm the clarion call that another world is possible. In Conclusion, allow me once again to underline CLR James' contention on American Civilization, an assertion that captures our moment, when he asserted; "the mass of population had become so distressed by the failure of the promise of liberal democracy that they were prepared to give up on it and elect instead to live vicariously through violently amoral political heroes. To this extent, the great masses of the people no longer feared power; they were ready to allocate power to anyone who seems ready to do their bidding. Making society vulnerable to totalitarianism…
I thank you.