Ginwala criticises the ANC for undermining Scopa

Writing for the Business Day back in 2002, ANC MP Andrew Feinstein said: “If the standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) continues to act in a partisan way — it may as well not exist at all.”

This week, in an interview on The Justice Factor, eNews (August 23 2009), it was fascinating to see former ANC speaker Dr Frene Ginwala come full circle and criticise the ANC for undermining Scopa. She said the ANC had removed the privilege associated with that office and decried the ANC’s arrogance for removing this provision without consulting anyone including her as the speaker at the time.

She expressed alarm that the importance of this office was being disregarded by her own party. What they say about hindsight being the best teacher comes to mind. But quite frankly, The ANC, I am certain, did not stop there in seeking to denigrate the role of this important parliamentary committee.

They have sought to undermine Scopa at every turn since the days of Gavin Woods. The most visible and fresh memory is that of the arms-deal investigation that resulted in Woods resigning as chairperson out of protest for interference and non-cooperation by the executive.

Now the question we must answer is why does the Constitution require that Scopa be chaired by the opposition? It is surely to ensure a heightened level of accountability. That assumption falls flat on its face if such a chairperson cannot in fact exercise some level of influence and authority on the committee. If he simply becomes an extension of the ruling party this flies in the face of the Constitution’s intention to make this a watchdog of the executive. The ANC is fooling no one by placing a one-man party representative to chair this committee.

They know very well that in order to be effective, he will need back-up, something that another opposition candidate with the backing of a bigger political team can afford. Being a one-man band, Themba Godi, with all his good intentions, will have the executive running circles around him.

I am heartened by the noises he has made lately by reprimanding director-generals for neglecting their duties, but quite frankly these were more of a bark than a bite and these civil servants know this because they suspect there will be no meaningful follow-through. He could of course deal with this by assembling an oversight team around him as chairperson and call on the other parties to lend him some capacity for research.

I am not aware that this is happening. Simply relying on parliamentary staff assigned to him is hardly adequate. What is needed is political back-up to identify issues that the executive should account on and push through an ANC-dominated committee. He needs to pursue an accountability agenda that unfortunately will embarrass the ruling party into doing what they resent: accountability to Parliament. He will need to push for more powers for Scopa to hold ministers accountable.

He will also have to design the committee programme in such a way that it does not depend on the executive for the success of its operations. Suggestions being made for example to summons ministers to appear with their director-generals will go a long way in exposing some of the foolish and sometimes illegal instructions they give civil servants and never have to answer for it.

The recent Scopa findings that more than 2000 civil servants have been found to have business interests with a potential conflict of interest and that R600 million is suspected to have been embezzled by civil servants is a typical example of the toothlessness of the current arrangement.

First, the government representatives — some of whom are implicated — attempted to lie to the committee and then when they eventually told the truth, Parliament was too baffled to come up with action. This is where the chairperson, with the necessary backing, should kick in. There must be a clear step to force some action against these civil servants so that this conduct is not repeated.

But no, we are still waiting to hear whether any action will ever be taken. At this point Travelgate comes to mind. Under the nose of the same Scopa chairperson, MPs not only got away with the corrupt practice of abusing their travel privileges, but Parliament went on to buy the debt book letting me and you, the taxpayers, pay for the MPs’ indiscretions again. No wonder more than 100 members of the previous Parliament anyway were defendants on many cases ranging from shoplifting to corruption.

With MPs like these, how do we expect the committee meant to hold them accountable to ever be effective? In many ways the role that Scopa needs to play is the only hope we have for an ANC-dominated Parliament to hold its own executive accountable given a window of influence provided by being a chairperson of such an important committee.

All we have is a theoretical compliance with the constitutional provision that such a committee must be chaired by the opposition. If we cut through the charade, in practice, the ANC has sabotaged this exercise anew by ignoring major opposition parties in Parliament that could have realised the intention of the legislature to truly hold the executive accountable with this mechanism. And you say our democracy is safe? Me thinks not. It is sad that Ginwala only realises this now. Too little. Too late.