Mashatile vows to crack whip on failing ministers

● Deputy president says cabinet members must be accountable to parliament

Deputy president Paul Mashatile, as leader of government business, has vowed to crack the whip against aberrant cabinet ministers who fail to account to parliament.

The leader of government business is responsible for the interaction between the executive and parliament.

In his first question-and-answer session with MPs in the National Assembly yesterday, Mashatile was also questioned about municipal debt to Eskom which at the end of December totalled R56.3bn and is rising.

He said the Treasury was preparing a circular under the Municipal Finance Management Act dealing with the government’s relief strategy with regard to municipal debt to Eskom.

The circular would be released later this month for implementation expected on April 1.

He did not provide details but generally repeated the plans announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa in his state of the nation address earlier this year to deal with load-shedding and municipal debt.

Ramaphosa said the Treasury planned to deal with municipal debt to Eskom, a plan which would involve installing prepaid meters to ensure payment of electricity bills to municipalities.

The question-and-answer session was delayed for about 50 minutes after the fire alarm went off and the cause was established.

National Assembly speaker Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula told the house before Mashatile began his answers that the cause of a suspected fire was that the capacitor of a light in the Good Hope building where the session was held had overheated, affecting the light cover, which caused smoke.

This triggered the smoke detector, setting off the fire alarm. No damage was caused.

Mashatile gave the undertaking that there would be consequences for ministers who did not respond in writing to MPs’ questions as the executive had to be held accountable to parliament.

“We are not going to compromise on that [accountability],” Mashatile said.

“Members of the executive have a constitutional obligation to avail themselves to respond to questions for oral reply, appear before relevant portfolio committees and attend plenaries.”

He was answering a question by DA chief whip Siviwe Gwarube, who complained that ministers routinely did not attend National Assembly plenaries to answer questions.

They sent deputy ministers who were not suited to answering questions.

When they did appear, “ministers often give inadequate answers to questions, making a mockery of the oversight function of parliament”, she said.

Mashatile noted that the number of lapsed questions by ministers had fallen under former deputy president David Mabuza from 405 in 2019 to 83 by the end of last year and his goal was to reduce this to zero.

It would take time because some questions related to SOEs or agencies which caused delays in getting information.

One way of dealing with this would be to give the SOEs and agencies deadlines.

Ministers with more than 10 unanswered questions for written reply were required to inform the leader of government business, give reasons and the remedial actions that would be taken.

This information was presented fortnightly at cabinet meetings.

This had resulted in the improvement and Mashatile said he would continue to submit reports to cabinet on unanswered questions.

Instead of allowing questions to lapse, ministers must delegate their answer to deputy ministers.

Mashatile said it was premature to pass judgment on whether the saga at Ramaphosa’s game farm Phala Phala had undermined the government’s efforts to combat crime and corruption because a number of investigations were still under way. “We simply do not have sufficient information to reach informed conclusions at this stage.”

The president had committed to co-operate fully with these investigations and was not being shielded.

“The fact that public institutions can without hindrance investigate the affairs of no less a figure than the president of the republic speaks volumes about the strength of our democracy,” he said.

He said the government would not be able to compensate the families of those who died in hospital as a result of load-shedding because it affected many people and this would “open a can of worms”.