DPME on use of Monitoring and Evaluation information for oversight; Match-fixing discussion

Meeting report

Potential use of Monitoring and Evaluation information for Oversight
Mr Stanley Ntakumba, Acting Deputy Director General: Institutional Performance and Monitoring Evaluation, DPME, apologised for the absence of his Director General and introduced his colleague. He gave a brief overview of the presentation. DPME leadership had instructed the DPME to share as much information as it could with the legislators as that information was there to be of utility to them rather than the technocrats. His colleague would be talking to planning in government which was a function which had been transferred by the President from the National Treasury to the DPME since all plans in government were approved through Parliament. He skimmed through the slides to allow more time for discussion.

The inputs were budgets, human resources and infrastructure and activities which DPME used as part of management practices to achieve the output, which was the service delivery. Operation Phakisa was where officials were put into one room for a week or two to resolve recurring weaknesses in government service delivery programmes.

Medium term planning in government
Ms Edeshri Moodley, Chief Director: Government Performance Information, DPME, briefed the Committee on medium term planning in government. In her comments on Sports and Recreation South Africa (SRSA), she noted that the Free State and the Western Cape were not reporting on the indicator for the number of people actively participating in organised recreational activities. This begged the question as to whether they did not value that indicator or whether they had not budgeted for it. Interestingly the North West seemed to be either planning for compliance or for the Auditor-General and that needed to be investigated. From a National Treasury (NT) and DPME perspective, they were trying very hard to bring planning, budgeting and reporting together because previously there had been a silo mentality in doing each of those. To that end, the two departments had started performance dialogues with other departments where NT and DPME would ask the departments what the funds were actually buying. Moreover DPME had also started looking at previous year performances and if a department had been found to have failed in a particular programme, then that department would have to motivate why it needed that funding. The Annual Report reported on what had been planned in the Annual Performance Plan (APP). Looking at the Club Development sub-programme for 2012/13 it could be observed that SRSA had severely under delivered.

The Chairperson thanked the DPME for its briefing as it would assist the MANCO in taking forward its work concerning the Committee’s strategic planning workshop.

Mr Bergman asked if there were sanctions where municipal programmes were not performing and rewards for those that were doing well. What happened when a change of government occurred and how secure was the National Development Plan (NDP) in terms of entrenchment?

Ms B Abrahams (ANC) asked why the Western Cape was an island and why it was not reporting on the ‘active recreation’ indicator? What plan of action did the DPME follow if entities were on level 1/ 2 in terms of the Management Performance Assessment Tool (MPAT). What remedies were there?   What happened when DPME arrived unannounced and found that M&E was not being done by a department, and there had been no improvement for a period of years? How could the Committee recommend sites for DPME to visit? 

Ms Manana said that one found that when there was poor financial management, it was the Small, Medium and Micro Enterprises (SMMEs) that suffered as they went unpaid for months after rendering services. How did the DPME assist in making M&E effective across all spheres of government?

Mr Mmusi said that even though all departments have policies to guard against bad performance, what could be done to make those policies more robust to help departments achieve what they needed to achieve.

Mr Malatsi asked for clarity on the correlation between targets and outputs insomuch as budget allocations are done. How did that evaluation process inform budget allocation from NT if at all? Moreover how did performance agreements with Directors General correlate with outputs? Was the performance agreement that the President signed with individual members of Cabinet considered at all?

Mr Ntakumba replied that the DPME would not be exhaustive in its response but would reply in writing to any questions that remained. He said that when a project was not performing, the linkage of individual performance agreements of officials and the performance of their departments or programmes was not something that was fully functional at this stage, but the DPME was working to strengthen that area. Currently what would be found was that officials tended to concentrate on other managerial issues that were not linked to outputs: but as Ms Moodley had said there was a strong sense to link those. That was important because the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA) had provisions to deal with non-performing officials. It started with extension of the probation period so that officials could be taken for training or counselling  to remedy their failures. If they still failed even with all that remedial action, the DPME had a right to fire those officials and that extended to the highest levels in departments. There was a drive to ensure that the system did not only link to maladministration and corruption but to non-performance as well.

The safeguard for the Medium-Term Strategic Framework (MTSF), the National Development Plan (NDP) and other long term plans was that the National Planning Commission dealing with that plan only had the Deputy President and the Minister of DPME as politicians; all other commissioners were civil society intellectuals and academics. After the NDP had been developed it had been presented to Parliament and its endorsement by Parliament was another safeguard. Moreover the President and the Minister had said that the NDP could be revised, but that process should not be taken lightly. Critically only the implementation remained and the new MTSF was a document saying what things a particular political administration would do to implement that NDP. By the end of July all its chapters would be available to the public through the DPME’s website. That would act as another safeguard in holding a particular administration to account on how it would implement the NDP. There were systems of institutionalising planning, monitoring and evaluation, and implementation of the plan. Those were to perpetually exist beyond a particular administration. Moreover, to respect democratic processes, it was important that in the development of the MTSF the mandate of the political administration electorate of a particular time was incorporated at provincial and regional level.

Remedies to improve skills at national departments were conducted through the National School Of Government, who were actual custodians of the planning function in the state. It had about eight courses on M&E. Other courses were on planning, budgeting and risk management. The DPME subsided training where it was needed. 

The DPME would welcome invitations to do unannounced site visits but there was a programme that it could openly share so that whatever sites MPs felt were missing could be added so that the DPME could provide feedback on the work in those sites.

The DPME was championing the Frontline Service Delivery Programme to tell departments what they needed to follow up after visiting their institutions and to leave improvement plans. Progress would also need follow through. However, some of the problems that DPME found were more systemic which was the reason for it following up. For example, the South African Police Service (SAPS) management was very enthusiastic in understanding that: systematically DPME was finding that managers on the ground were struggling with the rent for facilities. The DPME would then establish a stronger program to make those improvements.   

DPME did acknowledge that departments did not do M&E themselves which spoke to the red colour in the Summary of published MPAT results but there was improvement around APPs and the quarterly reports.

The poor financial management which led to non-payment of service providers was a very big indicator in that companies went under and families suffered due to these unpaid invoices. The DPME had championed an improvement on that matter. The President had previously called in all the DGs to ask them about that and DPME had then gone around finding out why departments were slow to pay providers. That tracking oversight was progressing quite well. Moreover, in working with NT the DPME as part of the new function on the Chief Procurement Officer, the NT was checking on a systemic response to supply chain challenges and the maladministration that occurred in that region.

The DPME did a lot of work around effectiveness especially on the priorities of government. This was why its work went beyond the MTSF where there was a detailed delivery agreement which spoke to what a department was supposed to do what and by when and that was followed through with regular reporting. There were also Cabinet implementation forums where effectiveness was deliberated on with solutions development. The Operation Phakisa programme sought then to take that forward by making sure that there was turnaround after effectiveness had been found to be problematic.

The DPME encouraged departments through evaluation to ask themselves the question: so what happens seeing that there is a policy that has yielded very few results? That policy needed review, and if that meant a kind of design evaluation to make sure that it was having the proposed impact, then that needed to be changed. Through the MPAT, the DPME had discovered that not only were policies poorly implemented but they had been poorly designed. The DPME would then have to go back to the Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA) to tell it that the service delivery improvement was not working and how it could improve that. The NT had to speak to the challenges that an ordinary official faced in supply chain management system and procurement and to how it could be made to be simpler. The DPME also wrote case studies of good practice where new departments could learn from older departments.

Part of DPME’s Performance M&E was to have performance agreements for Ministers which were signed with the President. The first cycle of agreements had just lapsed. In terms of the MTSF, the DPME was currently drafting new agreements with departments, but those between the President and the ministers were not contracts, but a management tool. They were tools to specify what actually would be done by a particular ministry. The DPME’s prerogative was to take the MTSF after it had been aligned to the departments’ plans to make sure that they were both aligned to the performance agreements of the Directors General. That process was currently being improved on in terms of the NDP and to ensure that capacity was enhanced. For example, there was the debate of the head of the public service perhaps being the Director General in the Presidency so that that system was fully aligned.  

Ms Moodley said that indeed strategic plans and APPs were not cast in stone. Therefore those could of course be revised in the middle of the five year period. NT with DPME was driving a process of performance budgeting where the two departments were actually beginning to cost the outputs of the APP. Departmental operational plans needed to be costed and the DPME was costing per programme in terms of targets and budgets as stated in the Strategic Framework on APPs. Then they would cascade that costing to an operational plan level, where all activities would need to be costed as well.

She said that customised indicators were developed by  each sector for itself and therefore the Western Cape had to report on those indicators. When the DPME found provinces not reporting on those, it would channel its concerns to the provincial treasury and the premier of that province. The provincial treasuries were involved because they were funding those indicators and the premier’s office would then have to take up the matter with the department involved.

The Chairperson gave the committee researcher an opportunity to ask questions.

The Committee researcher said that his comment was based on the Committee’s experience over the past four years or so. On the support of athletes, especially in the Eastern Cape and some other provinces, this was not reflecting when the Committee did its own impact assessment of policy imperatives. An example was if one looked at the number of assisted athletes and checked how many had risen through the ceiling to gain national colours, even at junior levels to assist sport transformation, which was a policy imperative and at the core of social cohesion. There was always dissatisfaction about that in Parliament, more so if one looked at demographics. The Committee felt that those numbers for assisted athletes had an impact only on paper, because when it did its oversight, it found no correlation there.

In schools sport when one looked at athletes in comparison to trained coaches to sustain schools sport, the Committee was dissatisfied with the current arrangements. It was a policy issue, but one did not know who was responsible for funding that function and with which department it lay. This caused challenges between the Committee, SRSA and the Department of Basic Education (DBE). M&E needed to assist in delineating who funded what, because when SRSA trained those coaches and other relevant stakeholders it ultimately had to measure its contribution. That all boiled down to the accuracy of the information provided sometimes, especially for performance outputs vis-à-vis activities, as well as expenditure trends, which also caused unhappiness in the Committee. Taking mass participation as an indicator; in 2010/11 that indicator had been given R483 million to increase mass participation in sport so that this could be a feeder to the national teams, but there were no promising Ntini’s, Paulse’s and McCarthy’s whilst there had been investments there. If that indicator was measurable, how should the Committee then evaluate success and attainability? That spoke directly to the regulatory mechanisms in place, for example the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA) and other such tools were to some extent sleeping lions because the same bureaucrats could easily tame those frameworks. If that were not so, there would be no audit queries according to the AG. M&E possibly needed to talk to how the Acts could be critically evaluated so that they could not be easily tamed by officials. The Local Government Management Improvement Model (LGMIM) in terms of intergovernmental relations was looking at Integrated Development Plans (IDPs) where frontline service was concerned. Sport was catered for in the budget but when the Committee went to do oversight it found that the sport budget had been used for something else, what could the Committee do according to the DPME?

Mr Moteka said that even though his question had been catered to, it was not to his satisfaction because if provinces could simply put numbers as targets and indicators when reporting whilst improvement of sport in the country was suffering, that did not do any justice to anyone. For example, as mentioned, the Western Cape and the Free State were not reporting on funded indicators and other provinces were setting very low targets. It could not be business as usual after identifying this. He suggested that an independent needed to be responsible for setting targets and not the very same officials who wanted to be seen to be compliant with regulatory frameworks.

The Chairperson supported the questions of Mr Moteka and Ms Abrahams about the role DPME played in provinces that were non-compliant with certain indicators. What follow up did DPME do after it found non-compliant provinces?

Mr Ntakumba said that the researcher’s questions had no ready answers from the DPME delegation. In evaluating in-depth whether things were as they were supposed to be, only then did DPME commission research, via a range of state machinery and not just DPME, but DPME encouraged national and provincial departments to do that work themselves. More so when there was positive performance, the other provinces and departments needed to know and learn from that as to why there were good performing provinces. He noted that there was an outcomes facilitator from DPME that dealt with the sport sector that could come the next time to brief the Committee on the details relating to some of their specific questions.

In response to the Chairperson asking why that individual had not come, Mr Ntakumba replied that as he had noted ahead of time, the DPME on that day was just giving an overview of their work, so that if the Committee wanted specifics it could be catered for at a late date and in detail.

The Chairperson said that the Committee would forgive the delegation since it had excused itself quite early that in its briefing it would be able to answer some of the questions from the Committee and not all of them.

Mr Ntakumba said in relation to target setting versus the actuals: the work of the outcomes facilitator was to ensure that what is specified in a department’s policy, the NDP and the MTSF would be properly targeted in the strategic plan and APP. Therefore it was DPME’s job to check that officials were not gaming the system by setting very low targets so that they could shine or by setting unreasonable targets which could discourage morale in a department. The role of the legislature at provincial and national level would be to deliberate on those reports and voice any dissatisfaction. That also spoke to checking expenditure against achievement of targets where putting a target on the IDP resulted in that money going towards something else. Municipal Councils had to check that it could account for those diverted funds. Moreover, for briefings to Parliament, DPME normally invited the Auditor-General, the Public Service Commission (PSC), DPSA and Statistics South Africa (StatsSA) to come along so that questions could be responded to directly.

He said DPME did follow ups directly to ensure there were performance improvements and to try to enforce some kind of accountability where possible but even then it was very limited in terms of consequences for non-compliance. This was the role of Chapter Nine institutions, legislatures as well as Parliament itself. That was a gap in terms of DPME performing its work. For example, in intergovernmental relations, a DG of a national department could not go to a province and punish an official by law, irrespective of that official’s incapacity that was affecting the whole sector. That was work in progress for the state as it was ensuring that there were business processes that could make it better run.

Ms Moodley replied that previously indeed the state had been number-crunching too much where number of learners, clubs assisted was paramount, but as of the new cycle from 2015 going forward, the DPME would champion quality services. For instance, extending from the researchers’ question, the DPME would want to know from a department what kind of support it had offered a learner? An example would be where human settlements indicated the number of houses built, the DPME was not only interested in the number of houses built it also wanted to know about the quality of the houses built. She reiterated that the DPME and NT had started performance dialogues where departments were called to actually account on how they had spent their budgets and what services had been bought through those funds. Those services had to be of good quality as far as DPME was concerned.

The Chairperson asked what happened when a particular DG, in explaining under expenditure, said that that was a result of complying with Treasury regulations – at the expense of effecting real development.

Ms Moodley replied that the way that DPME structured the guidelines for budgeting and planning, so where there was under expenditure, it would expect some kind of non-achievement of targets in the APP. Sometimes a department could have been really efficient and had saved but had achieved that target as well. The Committee could also check on the indicator tables were there was under delivery because where that happened that needed to correspond with under expenditure. This would mean that a department was not buying the service it was supposed to deliver. Moreover if that department was under delivering on services and over spending that meant it was spending on the wrong things. That could be picked up quarterly through looking at the In-Year Financial Monitoring (IYM) data as well as the quarterly performance report.

Mr Moteka commented that the Committee was not happy that provinces were getting allocations for sport but those funds were being used for other purposes. Citizens would start wanting to know where these monies went.

The Chairperson said that the information that the DPME had provided would become useful as part of the information to be used during oversight tours. The Committee had committed to checking up on the Municipal Infrastructure Grant (MIG) allocation for sport and the statistics from the DPME presentation would assist during oversight. The strategic plan of the Committee would also be greatly enhanced by the DPME information. She then thanked the DPME

Committee business
The Committee Secretary noted the planned dates for the workshop. There were members of the Committee who had indicated that they possibly would be unable to attend the Saturday session due to constituency work commitments. The Committee would then have to decide on whether to reschedule that session, pending its approval by the House Chairperson.

The Committee content advisor added that the National Assembly was currently underway in drafting its five year strategic plan for Parliament. The cut-off date for that five-year strategic plan was 10 October.  His suggestion was that the Committee should wait until after that date as that plan would give direction to the Committee’s strategic plan. October was the month when the Budgetary Review and Recommendations Report (BRRR) would be considered by the Committee. Therefore suitable dates needed to be towards November when the NA would not be as busy, if that were desirable to the Committee.

Mr Ralegoma had observed that other Committees had already undergone their strategic workshop, but in light of the new information and going with the staff advice would not affect the Committee adversely, then the Committee certainly could consider delay as there was already a three month strategic plan.

The Chairperson said that the Committee had very few members for anyone not to attend the workshop. She also was not sure if the Committee would get approval to have the workshop as she had not received an approval letter from the House Chairperson so it was not clear whether the Committee was going or not. She suspected that the content advisor’s advice was nearer to the way how things would unfold.

Mr S Malatsi (DA) asked if there was any particular rush to wrap up the workshop. If the Committee could be informed on what the possible outcomes of the workshop were, then that matter could be deliberated as well.

The Chairperson replied that possibly the House Chairperson would speak to Mr Malatsi’s point the following day, as all Committee Chairpersons had been called to a meeting with the House Chairperson. She suggested that the Management Committee (MANCO) should be given a chance to deliberate on dates seeing that she might be better informed after the Chairpersons meeting on the following day.

Match-fixing investigation: feedback from Committee content advisor
The Chairperson asked the content advisor to provide feedback on the way forward on the FIFA issue and what channels were available to the Committee.

The Content Advisor said that he had researched the brief and the documents were available to the MPs, but of importance there were the agreements between FIFA and South Africa through SAFA. All processes that had to do with the Amended National Sports and Recreation Act, 2007 (ANSRA) as to what the interventions the Sports Minister and SASCOC could institute to assist in matters such as match fixing, had been explored and exhausted. The President had responded to the Minister’s last resort; to have an enquiry possibly only after FIFA had concluded its own international investigation into match fixing. Even that would require SASCOC’s determination as to whether there was any more reason to set up a commission of enquiry as legislated in ANSRA. Parliament had then sought to find out how it could request FIFA to come and account. One provision was that the Committee could write to the Speaker of Parliament to request permission to call FIFA to come and account concerning match fixing. It could also request through SAFA that FIFA do this. Alternatively the Committee could merely wait for FIFA’s final report. Those were all the options that had been explored; there could be other legal matters that Parliament could explore but he had not been able to explore any such.

The Chairperson said the advice meant the Committee needed to decide on how to proceed as it had interest in that match fixing saga.

Mr Malatsi said that the Committee’s interest was that it needed information on why there were delays in updating the country and Parliament on the interventions FIFA had put in place to militate against match fixing. It would then be up to FIFA to decide whether it was in its interest to update or not but the Committee certainly had a right to write to FIFA with SAFA’s support. Its response would inform the Committee’s way forward from then on.

Mr Ralegoma advised that the Committee should ask the Minister of Sport about its concerns over match fixing before consulting FIFA directly.

Mr Moteka said that he felt that the Committee was quite aware of the Minister of Sports’ intervention regarding match fixing and that all the Committee would be doing, would be assisting the Minister to get an update on the investigation on match fixing. There was no bypassing him in doing that.

Mr Malatsi agreed that the Committee would be doing no by-passing as all the executive processes concerning that matter had been put to rest, through the President refusing to appoint an enquiry pending FIFA’s investigation. There was nothing extraordinary in informing the Minister via writing that the Committee had decided to engage FIFA directly.

The content advisor said that he agreed with the Minister in saying that corruption and maladministration in sports needed to be unearthed, but that needed the understanding that the minister had limitations in charging members of federations. After the President had respondent to the Minister concerning the enquiry, considering that there had been the Soccer World Cup (SWC) 2014, FIFA would have wanted to include the all the allegations and investigations from that SWC one would assume. Even SAFA had alluded to the fact that it was not aware in which country had FIFA concluded its investigation, but the Committee and the country could determine was how far its powers extended so that it could call an international body to account. That was worth exploring and there was nothing wrong in writing to FIFA but the question remained as to when it would agree to come and account. It was not the Committees mandate to deal with that however, the content advisor was advising that such bodies which were beyond the powers of the Committee should be engaged through the Speaker of the NA first.

The Chairperson said that seeing the Committee had never met its Minister, it was high time for him to come and explain some of the issues which had been raised through the work of the Committee to that date. The Committee could not write to the speaker without having received an account from its minister. She reiterated Mr Ralegoma’s sentiments that the Minister must come and account for that match fixing saga as the Committee was not happy that that issue had not been concluded.

Mr Bergman commented that the issues were neither with the President, nor the Minister where match fixing was concerned because they would say that there was no more they could do as FIFA was the entity that needed to respond. The question then remained as to whether Parliament had powers to request FIFA to come and explain.

Mr Moteka said that it was unacceptable that the Minister came to Parliament’s plenary sessions but could not come to the Committee to account.

Mr Mmusi commented that there was agreement that FIFA had to account, but the Minister was an easier individual to request than FIFA was.

Mr Malatsi agreed with Mr Mmusi but reiterated that FIFA coming to the Committee to account was the more important issue where match fixing was concerned. Therefore summoning the Minister was to inform the Committee’s steps in engaging FIFA and not to determine the correctness of the Committee’s steps, even though they would be unprecedented.

The Chairperson interjected that she would rule on that discussion as she wanted to avoid a scenario similar to that of the National Assembly on 21 August 2014.

Mr Mmusi raised a point of order that the Minister was not being summoned to come and determine for the Committee on whether it was correct to request FIFA to come to Parliament.

The Chairperson interjected that Mr Malatsi was being misunderstood. All he had been implying was that the Committee should be cognizant of the fact that it was not calling the Minister to seek his permission to call FIFA. Mr Malatsi needed to pay closer attention as well as no MP had alluded that the Minister would be called for any other reason besides the FIFA issue.

Mr Ralegoma said the impression that Mr Malatsi was giving was that sports had noone overseeing it in SA.

Mr Malatsi reiterated that calling the Minister was to inform the Committee’s step in engaging FIFA and that statement did not infer that sports had no leadership.

The Chairperson said that seeing that there was agreement that FIFA had to report, but that the differences seemed to be in the approach in getting that information. The Committee needed to agree that seeing that there was a Sport and Recreation minister, and it had not asked his permission to have SAFA come to Parliament. There was advice from the content advisor on how to approach that problem. Therefore the minister was simply being called to inform him, amongst other things, that the Committee wanted FIFA to report on match fixing. She was closing this matter with the promise that the minister would be requested to address the Committee on the FIFA issue. Moreover the international accords between FIFA and the country could not be seen to be obstacles in getting FIFA to address the Committee. She asked if the MPs would be offended if she closed the topic.

Mr Moteka said that he had observed a new phenomenon in the Committee because it usually used to argue robustly but in a unified manner. That morning MPs were speaking as party representatives and that would make the Committee’s work difficult; therefore he advised that the Committee needed to revert to its former way of deliberating.

The Chairperson said that she would not allow that because the Committee understood that its goals were a unified and transformed nation.

Ms Manana asked that Mr Bergman should please retract his statement that the minister was an ANC minister because that would cause divisions in the Committee, as his apology had been lukewarm when he had been cautioned over that.

The Chairperson asked if the happenings of the previous Thursday in the NA had influenced the Committee that morning because there had been consistent toleration between party representatives till that morning. Mr Bergman had apologised sincerely after he had been cautioned by her. 

Mr Ralegoma said that the Committee would remain unified, but MPs needed to be consistent even in the plenary sessions. Moreover in terms of numbers it was clear there was a majority party in Parliament and that majority could be used in all Committees.

The Chairperson said that she had been reminded that the Committee needed to be consistent that SARU was also being investigated and the Committee needed to deliberate on that as well, otherwise it would seem as if the Committee was obsessed with SAFA. The Committee would address all the federations when it felt the need to be clarified on matters. She then pleaded with the Committee to be unified.

Committee minutes
The Committee considered the minutes of the 19 August meeting.

Mr P Moteka (EFF) said that there was a substantial amendment missing concerning Members of Parliament (MPs) speaking to the media in their various capacities, apart from that as representing the Committee.

Mr Malatsi asked for clarity as to whether the minutes reflected inputs or resolutions because if it were resolutions then he recalled making a clarification that he had spoken to the media on behalf of the DA.

Mr Ralegoma said that the issue still remained that MPs needed to be careful.

The Chairperson interjected saying that that section of the minutes was not for matters arising but for correction of minutes only.

Mr S Mmusi (ANC) also noted a technical amendment on the point that federation sponsorship deals could be diminished owing to bans on advertising for alcohol and tobacco, as it was made by a different MP than the one mentioned in the minutes.

Mr Ralegoma noted that he had indeed raised the point on diminishing revenue for federations.

Mr Malatsi noted that there had been undertaking that the research staff would update the Committee on how best to respond to the match fixing delays and what options there were in calling FIFA to account, even though there had been no set dates for that.

The Chairperson requested the content advisor to update them on issues surrounding Mr Luvo Manyonga (South African former Long Jump Champion) from Paarl, who had not participated in Glasgow, Scotland.

The content advisor said that he had only been able to reach Mr Khalid Galant’s secretary and that the South African Institute on Drug free Sport (SAIDS) report on the interventions for Mr Manyonga possibly would be forthcoming the following day when the Committee went on an oversight visit to SAIDS, Cape Town.

The Chairperson said that those MPs who could attend the SAIDS invitation should indicate this to the secretary. She suggested that the Committee should go at 09:30 am rather than during the lunch hour due to various commitments arising in Parliament.

Ms Abrahams said that in supporting Mr Ralegoma the MPs in the Committee were not Committee spokesperson except the Chairperson and reiterated Mr Ralegoma’s limitations on what was allowable as MPs.

The Chairperson cautioned that even though party MPs had a right to comment on issues, it was wise to first process issues before commenting on them and that she was the Committee’s spokesperson, but the Mr Malatsi issue had been handled that he had spoken on behalf of the DA.


Meeting adjourned.