Programme Director, the Chairperson of the National Council of Provinces;
Speaker of the National Assembly, Honourable Sisulu;
Speaker of the Parliament of Zimbabwe, Honourable Moyo;
Speaker of the Parliament of Namibia, Honourable Gurirab;
Deputy Speaker of Angola, Honourable Lourenco;
European Union (EU) Delegation to SA, Ambassador Van de Geer;
Provincial Speakers & Deputy Speakers;
Presiding officers and members of various legislatures;
Members of the Diplomatic Corps;
Distinguished guest;
Ladies and gentlemen
I am honoured to address the opening of the South African Legislative Sector's International Consultative Forum to exchange ideas on international best-practice in legislative oversight.
I wish to welcome our international partners to our country and thank them for their generous and valuable contributions to the South African legislative sector.
We are confident that through these partnerships and support programmes our national and provincial legislatures will grow from strength to strength in enhancing their oversight roles.
We meet at a time when the world is confronted with economic crises that require concerted efforts overcome.
Living through the vicissitudes of the global challenges compels us to draw pertinent lessons to improve efficiencies and accountability to head off the recurrence of systemic weaknesses.
More than ever, legislatures have the collective responsibility to work collaboratively with the executive arm of the state to answer some of the immediate challenges that relate to debt management, efficient resources allocation and stimulus economic planning.
Having lived through these challenges, we have benefited from increased cooperation and solidarity between legislatures, the executive, civil society, labour and business, providing valuable insight for how sectors of society can work together to advance the interests of our nations.
This period has also demonstrated, around the world, that there is sufficient room for the legislatures to continue performing oversight over the executive and in turn the executive accounting to the legislature in a mutually reinforcing and non-partisan way.
Programme Director;
The responsibility of legislatures around the world is to pass laws and to perform oversight over the work of the executive. Done in accordance with the principle of cooperative governance, this accountability mechanism underlies the values of good governance and public scrutiny over executive actions.
Legislatures also play a critical role in facilitating access for ordinary people to the law-making process and provide the opportunity for them to hold the executive directly accountable.
This way legislatures can also ensure that access to important government services such education and health is realised.
Of equal value is the promotion of basic human rights, equality, the eradication of poverty, good governance and economic growth.
Thus the accountability relationship between the executive and the legislature has changed overtime to include value-based approaches where legislatures are required to look into broader reporting mechanisms that take into account issues of efficient and effective resources management.
This value-based approach has demands more of legislative representatives to do more than interrogate issues of compliance with financial rules by asking questions about value for money.
The level of expertise required to perform these function remains a matter of great concern for developing countries that are constrained by lack of resources.
These challenges require that the executive, the legislatures and Auditor-General work more collaboratively to overcome them.
In this respect, experience suggests that legislatures have struggled to focus on implementation of laws, service delivery and performance accountability, simultaneously without adequate resources.
Thus more work must be done to assist legislature with resources and institutional support mechanism to respond to these contemporary challenges.
Programme Director,
I have prefaced my contribution in this manner to highlight the contemporary challenges facing legislatures today.
Facing these modern imperatives impels us to build strong foundations upon which dynamic legislative and parliamentary institutions may evolve.
I am satisfied that the South African legislative system has been evolving to accommodate these changes.
For example, our parliament passed legislation that allows parliament to amend the executive's budget.
This is a marked improvement in parliament's approach to oversight as South Africa was hitherto ranked amongst the worst performers on budgetary oversight around the world.
Members of the legislatures have also used their constitutional power to introduce legislation through private member bills.
More work is been done to enhance the oversight mechanism of our legislatures by coordinating planning between the executives and legislatures in order to harmonise programmes without undermining parliamentary oversight.
In order to enhance accountability the executive has also taken steps to develop a model for monitoring and evaluation
In this regard the South African Government has in 2009 established the Ministry in the Presidency for Performance, Monitoring and Evaluation to assess progress in priority areas identified as part of our national development plan.
While this mechanism is still at its infant stages, it not only emphasises greater accountability for public resources but also serves to effect better delivery of services through an outcomes based monitoring and evaluation approach.
These mechanisms will hopefully also enable timeous intervention complementary to parliamentary oversight.
This performance monitoring and evaluation system will enable us to produce performance reports that we believe will further strengthen the quality of oversight by Parliament.
Programme Director,
I wish to leave you with a few questions that I believe can benefit from further discussion in this seminar.
These relate to whether we are, as public representatives, in touch with the people within their communities and fully understand the challenges they face in their daily lives.
Are we assessing how the legislation we pass and the policies that the executive implements serve to improve the lives of ordinary people?
How do parliamentary constituency offices work with community organisations to facilitate meaningful inputs into the legislative process?
Do people, for example, know or identify with their public representatives? Are their representatives accessible?
How do we as public representatives ensure inclusion of issues that concern ordinary citizens on parliament's agenda?
I hope that this meeting will address these and other pertinent questions that confront our legislative sector.
I once again thank you for the opportunity to address you and wish you fruitful deliberations throughout your meeting.
I thank you.
