President's next Parliamentary Q&A session scheduled for May 

20 APRIL 2016

The Office of the ANC Chief Whip confirms that President Jacob Zuma will appear before the National Assembly on 17 May 2016 at 10:00for the quarterly Oral Questions and Answer session with MPs. The scheduled session is the second this year. In terms of the Rules of the House, the President must appear before the National Assembly to respond to oral questions four times a year. The President has fulfilled this task, including regularly responding to written questions, without fail.

Unsurprisingly, the DA's usual lies and misinformation recently claimed publicly that the President will not be appearing before the House this year to respond to questions from Members of Parliament.

This is despite the DA having been part of both the National Assembly Programme Committee and the Chief Whips Forum meetings where parties agreed that the Questions and Answer sessions with the President should not be scheduled on the current version of the programme of parliament until discussions with the Presidency regarding the exact dates of his availability are concluded.

This consideration was made because of the extraordinary nature of this year's parliamentary programme, which is inevitably interrupted by the scheduled local government elections later this year.

Despite 2016 being the year of the elections, which affects the normal programming of Parliament as there are fewer plenary sessions, the President will still appear before the House four times to respond to MPs' questions. The DA's mindless posturing was therefore opportunist, desperate and unnecessary.

Issued by the Office of the ANC Chief Whip, 20 April 2016