Desperate and divided: South Africa has had enough

By Lizette Lancaster

Increasingly, South Africans from all walks of life are mobilising for change. Many resort to public protest in the hope of galvanising government to improve its performance and do something about unacceptable levels of unemployment and poverty. Last year saw widespread community-level protests, along with large-scale student ...

The Week Ahead: Food Security, Expropriation Bill, UIF Bill & Marikana

It’s still early days and Parliament is not yet firing on all cylinders. There are no sittings scheduled in the main chambers and only a handful of meetings planned for the committee corridor. Nonetheless, there is still scope for headline-grabbing and party battles in this week's parliamentary agenda, with food ...

Review of Parliament 2015

The 2015 parliamentary year will be remembered as one of the most dramatic and eventful. The legislature had a bumper year of court battles, internal squabbles, brinkmanship, attempts to impeach the President, riot police batting with protesters and MPs and strike action. Despite all the sideshows and distractions, Parliament still ...

The Week Ahead: The strike and President top the agenda

Forget the party battles and EFF gimmicks. The really titanic struggle being fought out in Parliament at the moment is between the staff and management over performance bonuses.

Workers began striking last week after accusing Parliament of reneging on a past agreement for performance bonuses to be paid based on ...

The Week Ahead: Question sessions, higher education & legislation

It's a big week in the NA chamber with MPs scheduled to sit for long hours to consider several bills and assorted committee reports.

The major plenary highlights will be the question sessions involving the Ministers in the Social Services Cluster and the Deputy President on Wednesday and Thursday respectively. ...

The Week Ahead: All eyes on Minister of Finance as he presents mini-budget

Committees will continue examining government departments and state entities on their 2014/15 Annual Reports in preparation of their Budgetary Review and Recommendations Reports. These reports may include proposals on the future use of resources and are a critical part of Parliament’s engagement with the budget for the following year.

The ...

The Week Ahead: Parliament's fourth term kicks off

Parliament resumes this week after a two-week constituency period. The fourth term will run for seven weeks and the programme is packed with activities. Some of the highlights include committee, oversight and legislative work; oral questions to the executive and a review of the national budget.

Later this month, the ...

Infographic: Public Participation Snapshot

On 29 September 2015, the Dullah Omar Institute held a roundtable discussion that explored whether working with South African Legislatures is still a valuable investment for civil society. The discussion, “ South Africa’s Legislatures in 2015: What’ the point?” used research done on public participation trends for the portfolio committees ...

5 things MPs discussed about young people during the third term

By Sheilan Clarke

There were many interesting events in parliament over the past few months. From discussions about military conscription to Stellenbosch University’s appearance in parliament, here are five youth-related highlights from parliament’s third term.

stellenbosch

Sending SA’s youth to the army

Earlier this year the presidency revealed they were discussing ...

Infographic: National Crime Statistics - 2014/15

The Minister of Police released the national crime statistics on Tuesday 28 September 2015. Trends show that there has been an increase in contact crimes (0.9%) and contact related crimes (1.9%). Property related crimes decreased by 0.8% and there was a continued overall decrease in crimes against women and children. ...