DA requests Parliament to schedule oral questions biweekly with the Minister of Health and others

11 May 2020

Note to Editors: Please find attached soundbite in English from SiviweGwarube MP, DA Shadow Minister of Health.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) has written to the Speaker of the National Assembly, Thandi Modise, to schedule oral question sessions with the Minister of Health, Dr Zweli Mkhize, and other frontline departments every two weeks for the duration of the Covid-19 pandemic.

This comes at the back of reports that the South African government is withholding certain key information on the data and modeling of Covid-19 in fear of causing public panic.

This reasoning does little to inspire public confidence or promote transparency and accountability. Sharing the data and the modeling that the government is using to make key interventions in dealing with this crisis ensures that the public remains a partner in the fight against Covid-19 and will undoubtedly mean we will beat this together.

Oral question sessions in Parliament are scheduled by the presiding officers in a programming committee meeting. The next meeting is to be held this week, on Thursday the 14th of May. The DA Chief Whip will raise this issue and argue that the Departments of Health, Social Development, Finance, Small Business Development, Labour and Employment, Trade and Industry, Police, CoGTA, and Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development should answer oral questions in a virtual meeting of the House every two weeks. The programming committee can decide how departments are clustered and how many can be scheduled per week.

The crisis the world finds itself in requires innovation and agility. It also requires that the nation’s legislature asserts itself as a key accountability platform. While portfolio committees should continue to conduct their business, the oral question sessions are important for the Ministers to provide Parliament with updated and detailed information on executive actions.

Executive accountability is important now more than it has ever been. Government actions need to interrogated and agreed to by Members of Parliament. The sittings of Parliament are open to the public and these should be no different. South Africans must be privy to the reasoning behind government actions. They cannot simply be subjects in a constitutional democracy while the country has a fully functional Parliament.

The DA will continue to pursue accountability and transparency during this global health pandemic. South Africa can get through these uncertain and terrifying times if the various levers of our democracy work in concert.

Issued bySiviweGwarube,DA Shadow Minister of Health, 11 May 2020