In its first meeting in 2026, the Speakers’ Forum, the highest policy-making body for the country’s legislative sector, considered a report on the realignment of the sector’s 7th Term Strategic Framework. All present agreed that the sector must do things differently because it can no longer ignore the socio-economic despondency engulfing the nation.
Participating in the meeting that took place at Parliament recently, the Secretary to the Mpumalanga Provincial Legislature and Technical Supporter of the Sector’s Strategic Framework, Mr Hubert Shabangu, said: “We have to do things differently to gain public trust that has eroded over time.” He said the strategy is a result of a multi-engagement consultation process with key stakeholders that began in 2022.
The key priorities of the framework are, among others, the need to have a transformative sector that changes how it does its business, one that could answer the charge: “where was the sector when the state capture happened?”
Mr Shabangu said: “These are perceptions that have nudged us to come up with the sector’s strategic framework that is proactive rather reactive in its form and substance. For this to be achieved, the sector must have a collaborative partnership with critical stakeholders such as SALGA to ensure that its oversight mechanism takes into account the performance of municipalities in executing their service delivery mandates.”
The report suggested that the sector should identify its critical stakeholders and must have a sector database to strengthen its statutory compliance with its public participation mandate in its law-making processes to avoid litigation.
Additionally, the report recommended that nationally and provincially, the sector should ensure that its oversight findings and committees recommendations, both nationally and provincially, receive the appropriate response from the proper government departments. If this responsibility is not met, the sector’s oversight endeavor will not have the desired impact.
The report also underscores the need for the assessment of the impact of legislation and the need to have mechanisms to monitor and evaluate their socio-economic bearing on the lived experience of the citizenry, to ensure that law-making and oversight processes are not merely a matter of compliance but are impactful in combating the triple challenges of poverty, inequality and unemployment to improve the quality of life of South African citizens.
Ultimately, the report recommends that the sector should be responsive and transformative if it is to do things differently. To achieve that, the report states, the sector needs to ensure it enhances its impactful law-making processes and strengthens its outcomes-based oversight to ensure that the executive is more responsive and accountable to the sector’s oversight mandate.
The sector should also undertake meaningful and adequate public participation processes, strengthen sector co-operation and collaboration with critical stakeholders, and enhance capacity-building for members to enable them to uphold the prescripts of the new value proposition of a transformative legislative sector.
Many Speakers Forum members raised the issue how lack of adequate funding from the fiscus for its work and asked how the sector could effectively achieve these new oversight and law-making value propositions emanating from the report when it is not adequately funded to undertake them. Many speakers echoed the fact that the current status quo and the delays in passing the Legislative Sector Bill, which would ensure that the sector determines its own budget allocation or share from the national budget, remain an ongoing political concern.
Abel Mputing
11 February 2026
Arrange a tour