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Political Governance What is the role of parliamentary committees in South Africa?
Parliamentary committees play an essential role within the South African Parliament and provincial legislatures. A great deal of the in-depth discussion and debate that forms part of the legislature’s work is conducted within these committees. Parliamentary committees are specialist bodies of MPs, working together in smaller groups to inform legislation and policy development, and to hold the executive accountable for implementation. As members of particular portfolio committees, MPs often develop expertise and knowledge in their committee’s area of work. Members of the public may make submissions to parliamentary committees. They therefore provide a critical forum for interaction between citizens and their elected representatives.
Committees do not take decisions but make recommendations to their legislatures. Usually these recommendations are expressed in the form of reports to the House.
There are different kinds of parliamentary committees:
• Portfolio committees exist within the National Assembly and in each of the provincial legislatures. They help to oversee the work of different government departments on behalf of the legislatures. In the National Assembly, each portfolio committee consists of about 30 MPs and is responsible for shadowing a specific department, for instance, education, housing or health. They can also investigate and make recommendations regarding the department they oversee. These recommendations could relate to legislation, budgeting, restructuring, functioning, human resources, policy formulation or anything else they think is relevant. Likewise, committees of the provincial legislatures monitor particular provincial departments. However, provincial legislatures generally do not have portfolio committees for every single department.
• Select committees play a similar role to portfolio committees, but they are to be found in the National Council of Provinces, rather than the National Assembly. Unlike in the National Assembly, there is not always one select committee per government department in the NCOP. Instead, a single select committee typically attends to a cluster of related government functions, for example justice, safety and security, as well as defence.
• Standing committees are permanent committees that oversee a particular department or function in an on-going way. On the other hand, temporary ad hoc committees are formed from time to time to look at specific issues. They cease to exist once their mandate is completed.
• Joint standing committees are permanent legislative committees that include members from both the National Assembly and from The NCOP.
• Public accounts committees exist in the National Assembly and each of the provincial legislatures. As standing committees, they have an on-going responsibility to review financial and audit reports referred to them by their legislatures and to assess the integrity of the accounting practices these contain. As part of their mandate, public accounts committees have a duty to assist the legislatures in ensuring that public sector institutions remain within their budgets and spend according to the purposes determined by legislatures. They also help to hold the executive accountable for their financial management.
• Extended public committees are larger bodies comprising two or more existing parliamentary committees. A joint committee may be called to consider certain Bills that have strong relevance for more than one government department. For example, a Child Bill may require input from the portfolio committees on social development, health, education, policing, correctional services and justice. Joint committees are larger than ordinary portfolio committees but do not comprise a full sitting of the House.
Text adapted from PIMS’ Parliamentary Pocketbook by Stephen Heyns
Idasa has a long track-record of monitoring and contributing to debate around key political governance issues mainly in South Africa. In the years preceding democracy, it facilitated numerous processes aimed at the development of democratic governance at various levels of South African society...
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