The National Council of Provinces (NCOP), working in partnership with the Mpumalanga Provincial Legislature and the relevant local authorities, will be sitting in the Gert Sibande District, Mpumalanga, as part of its Taking Parliament to the People programme. The venue will be Silobela Stadium, Carolina, in the Chief Albert Luthuli Local Municipality.
The NCOP Taking Parliament to the People programme was initiated in 2002 to enhance public education and public participation, as a means of strengthening our democracy. Our focus is on rural and underdeveloped communities.
In particular, this is in pursuit of the NCOP’s constitutional injunction (in terms of section 72 of the Constitution) of facilitating public participation in its processes. In a provincial context, this injunction is extended to the Provincial Legislature, as per section 118 of the Constitution. The Constitution also empowers the two legislative institutions to respectively oversee the national and provincial Executive branches of government.
It is worth noting that the sitting of the NCOP in this province serves to advance the work of Parliament during the penultimate year of the fourth democratically elected Parliament, which is guided by the theme “Socio-economic development through oversight and public participation”.
You will recall that last Tuesday, the national Parliament launched the Budget Office, which is established as part of the process of implementing the Money Bills Amendment Procedure and Related Matters Act of 2009. The office will enhance Parliament’s oversight role by specialising in providing high-quality research and analysis of fiscal policy and making this available to parliamentary committees.
On the other hand, we are at an advanced stage of developing the Public Participation Framework for the Legislatures. The aim is to make public participation an integral part of Parliament’s lawmaking and oversight functions by, among other things, developing mechanisms and standards to achieve meaningful and broader public participation.
The NCOP Taking Parliament to the People programme is one of the mechanisms we use for ensuring that we involve people in governance matters. The programme gives effect to the constitutional promise that the NCOP serves as a forum for consideration of matters affecting provinces. At the heart of the programme lies the philosophy that the NCOP is at the cutting edge of overseeing cooperative government.
For historical purposes, let me indicate that in 2008 the then President of South Africa, Mr Kgalema Motlanthe, suggested that the success of the programme required of the NCOP to pay particular attention to follow-up. He was addressing the NCOP in Lady Frere, Eastern Cape.
This was at a stage where as the NCOP we had concluded a study on the impact of the programme in the nine provinces we had visited by then, which was done by an independent research institution. This led us to remodel the programme, informed by what ordinary people said they wanted it to become.
As a result, the programme is now delivered as follows:
- intensive pre-planning, which includes on-the-ground research and a public meeting to hear the challenges directly from the people;
- feedback from the Executive during the main programme on issues picked up during the preliminary stages; and
- follow-up.
The preliminary processes in the preparations for the visit to this province have convinced us that we need to deal with the following issues during our sitting here:
- Basic education
- Governance and human settlements
- Health and social development
- Rural development, land reform and agriculture
- Sport and recreation
- Water and environmental matters
- Youth and economic development
We have invited national Ministers, Members of Provincial Executive Council, and Mayors of the municipalities in the district, to respond to the specific issues relating to the above that were raised by the people. We also expect new issues to emerge.
The Deputy President will address the NCOP on Friday, 15 March, the last day of the programme. We expect him to reflect on the general challenges of the area and to give us a national perspective in terms of the direction of the country.
Afterwards, we will process the report of the proceedings of this week as the NCOP, the Provincial Legislature and Municipal Councils following up the commitments and progress. Our committees will be critical in the follow-up process. Within a year, we should be able to have a sense of how the Executive is responding to the challenges facing the people of Gert Sibande District. In short, we will use oversight to follow up on the outcomes of our public participation activities.
