The South African Legislative Sector needs to be more visible, to communicate its agenda more effectively and to agitate for an introduction of a Bill that will seek to address the current disparities in the allocation of budget to the various arms of the state, this was what the Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly, Mr Lechesa Tsenoli said when he spoke to the Insession writer, Abel Mputing, at the Speakers’ Forum meeting that took place in Tshwane today.
Speaking about the significance of communication of the sector’s work, Mr Tsenoli said, the sector has to constantly communicate what “we do amongst ourselves as a sector, and to the institutions we come from.” According to him this is critical because there are political parties and politicians that are not part of the forum who need to understand the sector’s work in advancing law-making processes, oversight, accountability, international relations and diplomatic relations that the sector has entered into”.
Also, as a sector, he pointed out, as they have relationships with generous donors it is important to communicate with them to inform them about the sectoral programmes, what progress is the sector making and what further support is needed from the donors.
Furthermore, he said people in general need to know what are the issues that preoccupy the sector. Most of all he said: “We need to be creative in how we communicate that to the public that we serve and how best we can carry out our constitutional responsibilities more effectively.”
Apart from that, he said, to him communication is also a critical component of public participation without which public participation would not find expression within the sector. “In fact, the reason for the existence of public participation is a means to facilitate communication between public representatives and the public,” he added.
Mr Tsenoli said, communicating the work of the sector to the public is a critical part of the promotion of public participation. Also, he said, communication is the organising component “because when we exchange views we let people to be aware of the work we do, but also we get to understand what people think about us. In that way, we get to exchange views.”
He said, by linking others who are impacted on by the legislative system and the decisions that “we make, that helps us to improve on how we serve the people”. Through communication, Mr Tsenoli emphasised, people get informed and through information people tend to make trade-offs and compromises when they have information at their disposal.
He said communication is the area they, as the sector, tend to underestimate which the sector must start to tap into in a more assertive and creative way for it to make lasting inroads in the work that it is tasked with by the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa.
Speaking about the sector’s agitation for a Bill that will seek to bring an end to the skewed way of budget allocation from the National Treasury, he stated that the current 0.5% budget allocation to the sector against the 97% to the executive affects the oversight activities of the sector. That, to him, diminishes the oversight role of the sector over the executive, an instrument that the sector utilises to hold the executive accountable.
He said, for the parliamentary committees to conduct their work effectively they need to be on the ground and that needs enough budget. “We would not be able to conduct decent oversight over the executive if the sector is not funded sufficiently,” he said.
He said, as the sector they are conscious that they must fight wasteful expenditure and corruption robustly or any resource leakages as that is their duty to ensure that public funds are spent appropriately and serve the intended purposes.
By Abel Mputing
5 December 2019
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