‘It’s a drama, it’s a show’ – Ndlozi unhappy with ‘disorganised’ Parliament amid budget votes

Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) Member of Parliament (MP) Mbuyiseni Ndlozi is unhappy with the limited time parliamentarians have to fulfil their oversight role over the executive.

On Thursday, the National Assembly began its mini-plenaries to debate and vote regarding the budgets of various departments and ministries.

These debates provide MPs with the opportunity to formally discuss and provide input on departmental plans and budget allocations.

Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana allocated funds to all government departments in his February budget speech.

Now, the budgets must be approved through a vote by various portfolio committees before the National Treasury releases the allocated funds.

‘No qualitative parliamentary work’

Ndlozi has, however, voiced his discontent over the insufficient time MPs are given to analyse the budgets and annual performance plans before the debate.

“Members received documents in the meeting or the night before and the committees are forced to sit, in most cases, for two hours to consider extensive entities,” he told the National Assembly’s Programming Committee on Thursday.

Ndlozi suggested that it appeared Parliament was being “steamrolled into simply rubber-stamping” the departmental budgets.

“There is no interrogation and it cannot take place under those conditions. There’s no single committee where members received documents at least 48 hours before,” he continued.

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The EFF MP raised his concern about Parliament’s “disorganisation”, citing how some portfolio committees had to cut their meetings short and vacate the venue to make way for other committees to discuss the budgets.

“There’s not been any qualitative parliamentary work over the last two days,” he said.

He stated that the executive had an “unfair advantage” because the budgets had to be approved by Parliament by the end of July.

“We were disadvantaged by the late announcement of the executive for the constitution of portfolio committees, which took three weeks since the election of the president,” he added.

Watch the meeting below:

Ndlozi added: “Remember, the executive and the entities present annual performance plans and budgets. Then the committee must have an opportunity to meet for the second time to consider its own report.

“But these committees are only sitting once and they are debating today. What are they debating? We are just basically scripted, it’s a drama, [and] it’s a show. I don’t think the constitutional duty is being properly executed.”

He recommended that President Cyril Ramaphosa’s opening address of parliament be postponed to August.

“The executive needs to accept the consequences of its own actions. Let’s allow this week to be completely dedicated to committees and July, to be dedicated to the budgeting process. [The opening address] can come back in the first week of August whatever the case may be.”

Parliament timelines

uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party MP Mnqobi Msezane shared similar sentiments.

“We haven’t had adequate time to scrutinise and study this documentation.

“We only got the documentation late, hence we were requesting that these matters be deferred to next week on the basis that we need to be prepared – so that we can make an input adequately when we are ready,” Msezane said.

National Assembly Speaker Thoko Didiza acknowledged that while the situation was not ideal, she emphasised that Parliament had specific timelines to adhere to.

“It’s not only the National Assembly that has to consider [the budgets], it also has to factor in the National Council of Provinces [NCOP],” Didiza said.

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“In looking at what is possible, you will see that some of the committees are not going to be able to sit today or tomorrow. We will try and squeeze them next week,” she said.

“Obviously as you are saying, those that debating today and tomorrow might not have had enough opportunity to do the examination of their budgets as we would have liked ideally in the normal course of things,” Didiza told committee members on Thursday.

The speaker later pointed out that Parliament’s programme was adopted by the committee last week.

“It’s not like it was not agreed to in the last programming committee meeting and it was on this basis that we felt that those who were ready can continue today and on Friday because we are not changing the programme,” said Didiza.