By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) has delivered a scathing review of the sixth Parliament as an extension of the previous one – which has failed to adequately hold the executive accountable.
DA leader John Steenhuisen and chief whip Siviwe Gwarube, on Tuesday briefed the media on the work of Parliament over the past year.
The opposition party has repeated its threat to head to court if President Cyril Ramaphosa continues to withhold the performance assessments of ministers from the public.
This comes after the President pledged at the 2020 State of the Nation Address that the performance agreements would be made public so that the people of South Africa could hold those whom they elected into office to account.
But since then the Presidency said the performance assessments would not be disclosed to the public to avoid the information being used against them.
“…and the sixth Parliament will always be a testament to the reduction of Ramaphosa as a mere bystander to South Africa’s many failures,” Steenhuisen said.
“Should this information be withheld, we have already announced that we will institute a court action to retain this. South Africans deserve to know the truth about what our president really thinks of his ministers and, after all the dismal failures throughout the years, why he retains them in the cabinet, where they can continue to cause havoc in the economy and continue to cause suffering in the lives of ordinary South Africans.”
He also accused the ANC of continuing to make empty promises.
“There are many heavy promises that are made from the president all the way down to (ANC secretary-general Fikile) Mbalula who promised us that by December load shedding would be a thing of the past but have turned to nothing. It’s precisely the culture of secrecy and unaccountability that allows them to get away with it.”
According to Gwarube, the executive abused its powers and evaded parliamentary scrutiny during the lockdown.
The party is still challenging the Disaster Management Act in court.
“Perhaps the biggest failure of the sixth parliament was the sub-optimal performance of the national executive under Ramaphosa who himself evaded Parliament, and treated it much in the same way as [his] predecessor.”
The sixth Parliament’s term comes to an end at the conclusion of the general election next year.