The big problem with South Africa’s ‘Super Presidency’
There is increased pressure from both opposition benches and those within government for the establishment of a Parliamentary committee to oversee the Presidency.
The Presidency’s purview has significantly increased over recent years, being characterised by some in the opposite benches as a ‘super-presidency’. The latest such move was to absorb the portfolio of the shuttered Department of Public Enterprises.
On 23 July, President Cyril Ramaphosa presented his office’s R612-million budget before the National Assembly, which was seemingly a repeat of much of his Opening of Parliament address on 18 July.
The Constitution outlines that the National Assembly “must provide for mechanisms to ensure that all executive organs of state in the national sphere of government are accountable to it.”
All national organs of state are overseen by National Assembly committees, except the Presidency.
This was picked up in Zondo Report from the State Capture Inquiry.
It outlined that “recent history… shows that the president’s conduct is not always subjected to adequate oversight by the existing portfolio committee [thus] a process to enable the president and Presidency’s conduct to be subjected to more probing scrutiny… would therefore appear to be beneficial.”
Before the Zondo Report’s release in June 2022, IFP’s Narend Singh, now a deputy minister, proposed creating a committee to oversee the Presidency.
The proposal was stalled by the ANC members and was eventually pushed to the seventh administration – which did not create such a committee when others were established.
FF Plus parliamentary leader Corne Mulder, who served on the sixth Parliament’s Rules Committee where Singh proposed the establishment, said that “this will be an issue that will not go away, and it is something we’ll have to deal with”.
But what has greatly exacerbated these calls for an oversight of the Presidency is the decision to dissolve the Department of Public Enterprises and create a holding company which would centralise ownership of the State Owned Enterprises (SOEs).
“The coordination of the relevant public enterprises will be located in the Presidency during the process of implementing a new shareholder model,” said Ramaphosa during the announcement of the appointment of the seventh administration’s national executive on 30 June.
This includes “strategic entities” such as Eskom, Transnet, South African Airways, the South African Post Office and the South African National Roads Agency among others.
The official opposition, uMkhonto Wesizwe (MK), parliamentary leader John Hlophe said that the lack of an oversight committee is “a serious lacuna – we are here as parliamentarians to ensure that there is proper accountability.”
“With the dissolution of the Department of Public Enterprises, state-owned companies will now fall under the Presidency, which means they will no longer be accountable to Parliament,” said Hlophe.
Whiel the DA supports the establishment of such a committee, it outlined that other committees can still conduct oversight over respective SOEs.
Be “rest assured that we will also be calling state-owned entities to the relevant line departments’ portfolio committees,” said DA MP Kevin Mileham.
ActionSA caucus leader Athol Trollip questioned the lack of parliamentary oversight of the Presidency, despite previous calls for its establishment.
“After an absence of 10 years in this House, I see that the more things change, the more things stay the same,” said Trollip.
“In 2009, as the leader of the opposition, I called for a dedicated oversight committee of the Presidency. We have nine such committees in the provinces, and the question is, why not here,” he added.
Rise Mzansi leader and Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA) chairperson, Songezo Zibi, said that “over the years the size and scope of the Presidency has expanded significantly… however, the growth of the Presidency has not been matched by efforts to ensure that the many issues that previously fell to ministries, continue to be subject to parliamentary oversight.”
“At the heart of South Africans’ despair…is the sense that government leaders are not accountable. There is no one more obligated to set an example than you by working with Parliament to create an appropriate mechanism for this body to provide oversight over this work,” he added.
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