The Democratic Alliance (DA) in Limpopo is the only political party represented in the Limpopo legislature who submitted questions for written response during the 2020 session.
During the course of the year, the DA caucus submitted 72 sets of questions, of which 69 were published on the order paper.
The questions submitted were on all portfolios and only 1 response was received.
As per the Limpopo Legislature Standing rules, the caucus submitted 3 written requests to the Secretary and to Speaker Molapo between September and November 2020 to place the submitted questions on the order paper for oral responses, which is yet to occur.
It is worth noting that the Economic Freedom Fighters and the Freedom Front Plus’s contributions were inconsequential as they did not submit a single question, thus enabling the executive’s laissez faire approach to oversight.
The Constitution states that a Legislature has the power to conduct oversight of all organs of state,
- to detect and prevent abuse
- to prevent illegal and unconstitutional conduct on the part of the government
- to protect the rights and liberties of citizens
- to hold the government answerable for how taxpayers’ money is spent
- to make government operations more transparent and increase public trust in the government.
It has become clear that lack transparency is normalcy under Premier Mathabatha’s government and the executive has become a law onto themselves.
The DA is further concerned that the Speaker Molapo’s obvious partisanship towards the ruling party and the lack of enforcing The Standing Rules of the Limpopo Legislature has caused its oversight mechanisms to be captured.
Moreover the provincial Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA) is toothless and has been unable to enforce its resolutions for years now.
It is clear that the 6th House defied SCOPA’s constitutional mandate to scrutinize the expenditure of public money in the interest of taxpayers without fear of favour to shield its leaders from their failures of judgment instead of holding them to account.
The DA will continue to exhaust all oversight mechanisms to our disposal to hold the executive to account and will now explore legal options to enforce compliance by the Speaker and the executive of their constitutional obligations. The people of Limpopo deserve better.