2020-05-20 12:03
The information needed to make far-reaching decisions, such as extending the ban on the sale of cigarettes and alcohol, is still not readily available to Dlamini-Zuma’s department, but the minister went ahead and made these decisions anyway.
The Covid pandemic seems to have sent South Africa down a constitutional rabbit hole.
The country is being governed under the Disaster Management Act, and Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma is the Prime Minister – if not in law, certainly in fact.
Do not be fooled by her formal and obscure-sounding Cabinet portfolio – cooperative governance and traditional affairs.
Not only does the law empower this minister to declare a state of disaster, she’s also been able to issue regulations and delegations that have left few aspects of the economy and ordinary life unrestricted.
Some of these restrictions seem completely unrelated to the aims of “flattening the curve” or preparing the country’s health system for a spike in hospitalisations.
How such an extra-parliamentary command system was intended by Parliament, or accords with the values and supremacy of our Constitution, is hard to imagine.
The courts might ultimately have to decide these weighty matters, but one would have expected Minister Dlamini-Zuma to proceed with caution in the meantime.
She could at least have matched her extraordinary new powers with an extraordinary willingness to explain her decisions to the South African people.
Such a “culture of justification” is what distinguishes the legitimate exercise of public power from the authoritarianism of South Africa’s past.
But our new “prime minister” will have none of this, judging by her treatment of Parliament.
Since the start of the lockdown Parliament has not formally convened.
And so MPs have had only two means of holding ministers to account: virtual meetings of parliamentary portfolio committees, and written questions.
On both counts Dlamini-Zuma’s performance has been dismal.
Post-lockdown the portfolio committee looking into her department has had nine virtual meetings, but only twice has the minister graced us with her presence.
At her first appearance she declined to respond to questions about her ban on the sale of “warm, cooked food”.
And at her second appearance she left without taking questions, her apology having been hurriedly announced at the start of the meeting.
The standing committee of Parliament’s second chamber have seen even less of the minister.
Dlamini-Zuma’s contempt for parliamentary accountability is nothing new.
It is a matter of record that if an MP puts a written question to her they are likely to get the following non-response: “The information requested by the Honourable Member is not readily available in the Department. The information will be submitted to the Honourable Member as soon as it is available.”
This week she gave the same copy-and-paste answer when asked to disclose details of the public comments received by government in response to its draft lockdown strategy.
Consider the enormity of her concession: the information needed to make far-reaching decisions, such as extending the ban on the sale of cigarettes and alcohol, is still not readily available to Dlamini-Zuma’s department, but the minister went ahead and made these decisions anyway.
Taken at face value the minister’s answer is a textbook example of the kind of irrationality that ought to render government decisions unlawful and invalid.
Taken as whole, her attitude to Parliament suggests that South Africa’s de facto prime minister is becoming – with the apparent consent of the president at whose pleasure she serves – a law onto herself.
– Cilliers Brink MP, DA Shadow Deputy Minister of Cooperative Governance & Traditional Affairs
