Justice and Correctional Services Committee: Heavy workload ahead

In Parliament today a number of the National Assembly’s Portfolio Committees (PCs) met to elect their Chairpersons. As one of the few committees to have been clustered in the Fifth Parliament, People’s Assembly went along to the Justice and Correctional Services PC meeting.

Soon after being elected unopposed to the position of Chair, Dr Mathole Motshekga began the meeting by paraphrasing former Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe saying, “in our work we should respect one another, we should listen to one another”, and that he would be giving “the same weight to all arguments regardless of whom makes the arguments and what party they come from”.

After the brief meeting People’s Assembly asked Dr Motshekga what he would be bringing to the position of Chair and he responded, “I am not going to try to invent the wheel. I was part of the [Justice and Constitutional Development] Committee before. I am expecting to get a hand-over report on Thursday to look at the issues that were before the Committee and prioritise those together with my Committee and then move forward.”

He added, “I don’t want to be seen to be pushing things through the throat of others because I think all parties represented in the Committee have an equal responsibility to make sure we serve the people of this country.”

When asked whether he was concerned about the extra work load that his Committee faced considering it was overseeing two departments (Justice and Correctional Services), Motshekga explained, “Basically we are two committees in one and the work load will be heavy but we have hard-working big guns in the Committee. Unlike in the past where people regarded Friday a holiday, we are going to be meeting on Fridays.” He added that with commitment and hard work “the challenges will not be insurmountable. We will cope”.

The DA’s Shadow Minister for Justice Glynnis Breytenbach is less sure. “The DA is very concerned about the workload. The Committee is a very busy and important one, and it is a matter of great concern whether we will be able to do justice to the workload in its current form,” Breytenbach said.

Over and above the amount of work, she added that Motshekga seemed a sensible and fair chair.

When asked what contentious issues she thought the Committee would be dealing with this year, Breytenbach responded, “Contentious issues will most likely be the level of corruption and indiscipline in the correctional services arena, and the ongoing controversy surrounding the NPA.”

The Justice and Correctional Services Committee has up until 11 July to complete their Committee reports on these Departments’ budgets. As well as focusing on the budget allocations of both the Department of Justice and the Department of Correctional Services, Motshekga said they will be “hearing from stakeholders, including the two ministries and on the basis of those inputs we will come up with a report for Parliament”.