Eight months after Parliament decided to establish a committee that will play oversight on the president, progress on this initiative seems to have stalled as some parties are yet to make a submission on the format the committee should take.
This emerged when the long overdue committee was raised in the meeting of the National Assembly Programme Committee on Thursday.
ActionSA MP Lerato Ngobeni enquired about the update on the proposed committee when MPs met to discuss the programme for Parliament.
“I think at some point, and I don’t know where it lies in terms of being updated around the Vote 1 committee. We did vote that there must be oversight over Vote 1 in the Presidency. Maybe, if we can get an update as to when that committee will be established,” Ngobeni said.
Secretary to Parliament Masibulele Xaso said the matter was currently before the Sub-Committee on the Review of Rules.
“Political parties were asked to make submissions. The initial deadline, I think, was the 30th of May, then extended to the 6th or 7th of June,” Xaso said.
He also said only three parties have made submissions.
“So the matter is currently serving before that sub-committee. Once the sub-committee has concluded its processes on the issue, it will report to the Rules Committee, then the Rules Committee to the National Assembly,” Xaso added.
National Assembly Speaker Thoko Didiza urged the parties to finalise their submissions.
“If they still are otherwise, the sub-committee will have to deal with only those presentations that they had received on the modalities,” she said.
According to Didiza, there was an agreement by the Rules Committee on the formation of the committee, but parties were requested to actually give what the modalities of that committee should be.
This was because some elements in the budget for the Presidency are dealt with by separate portfolio committees.
“So the essence was what then would this committee deal with. It was those issues that parties were asked to make representations on,” added Didiza.
The formation of the committee to play oversight on the president dates back to the sixth Parliament when parties such as the DA, the EFF and IFP had written separately to former National Assembly speaker Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula asking that the portfolio on the Presidency be established.
In his report on state capture, Chief Justice Raymond Zondo recommended the establishment of a committee to oversee the president and the Presidency, among other things.
After President Cyril Ramaphosa in response to the recommendations of the Zondo commission, Parliament said the proposal to establish a portfolio committee to oversee the Office of the President should be referred to the Rules Committee.
In 2023, Parliament undertook a study tour to some countries to see how oversight of the Presidency was done.
Calls for the committee were reiterated in July last year during the debate on the budget vote for the Presidency, a department falling under Ramaphosa that houses some departments and state-owned enterprises, formerly part of the disbanded Public Enterprises Department.
It was not until October 2024 that the Rules Committee referred the proposal for the formation of an oversight committee on the Presidency to the Sub-Committee on Review of Rules to work out the details and come up with proposals to be taken to the House.
