President Zuma will grab the limelight this week when he answers oral questions in the National Assembly.
His previous question session last August was cut short when EFF Members interrupted proceedings and chanted “pay back the money”. That led to the suspension and fines imposed on 20 EFF MPs, which was later overturned by a court.
President Zuma will only respond to six questions and not deal with the outstanding matters from the previous session despite attempts by opposition parties to include these.
The spectre of conflict is always present in the Fifth Parliament so it is hard to rule out that Wednesday's session will be incident free. The questions were not available at the time of writing.
With rising concern about the proposed merger of municipalities, there will be more than the usual interest about the discussion on the challenges with demarcation of geographic areas as provided for in the Constitution Thirteenth Amendment Act, 2007. The AIC, which was founded in the Matatiele locality in protest against the inclusion of the area in the Eastern Cape rather than KwaZulu-Natal, put forward the topic.
On the legislative front, the NA chamber will also deal with the second reading of the Division of Revenue Bill and the Auditing Profession Amendment Bill.
In the Committee corridor, MPs will begin processing the budget votes for their respective departments. This includes meetings with the various departments and entities on their strategic plans, annual performance plans and budgets as well as input from stakeholders. Beyond this, there are some interesting meetings scheduled for the week. Here are the highlights:
On Tuesday, the Minister of Communications will brief a joint meeting of the Portfolio Committee on Communications and the Portfolio Committee on Telecommunications and Postal Services on digital migration. The country's switch to digital from analogue has been beset by problems and we are set to miss the June 17 2015 deadline agreed with the International Telecommunication Union. There was some good news last week when “Cabinet broke the logjam over set-top boxes”.
The Inter-Ministerial Committee set up to eradicate informal settlements in the mining area will brief MPs on their progress made. In his 2015 SONA, the President reported that a” total of 2.1 billion rand has been ring-fenced for this purpose with 290 million rand approved for Informal Settlement Upgrading in Mpumalanga, North West, Gauteng, Northern Cape, Limpopo and the Free State”.
MPs will hear about the Five (5) point plan to address the country's energy challenge. The short and medium term plan involves improved maintenance of Eskom power stations, enhancing the electricity generation capacity and managing the electricity demand. The Department is still finalising the county's long term energy security master plan.
The Standing Committee on Finance will be briefed on progress with regard to African Bank.
On Wednesday, the eradication of the bucket system comes under scrutiny when MPs get a progress report on the situation in all nine provinces.
On Saturday, the Portfolio Committee on Labour continues with public hearings on the National Minimum Wage. This time the focus will be on Limpopo and the Farming Industry.
In between, there will be some detailed legislating as committees continue their work on the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences and Related Matters) Amendment Act Amendment Bill, the Agrément South Africa Bill and the Medicines and Related Substances Amendment Bill.
You can find the full list of meetings here.
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