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National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete has called on members of Parliament to resolve their disputes internally instead of approaching the courts and exposing Parliament to possible interference by the judiciary.
“As parliamentarians, we have a responsibility to find solutions to the challenges facing our people. But we have to do so in a manner that acts as an example to the people we represent,” she said.
“With structures such as the rules committee, chief whips’ forum, and the committee of chairpersons, we are well placed to meaningfully resolve disagreements and effectively execute our mandate without inviting the courts to encroach on our constitutionally protected terrain,” she said.
Mbete was delivering the Parliament budget vote for 2017-2018 in the National Assembly on Tuesday.
She gave a background on how the Constitution sought to incorporate the separation of powers doctrine by devoting three separate chapters, and vesting specific authority and functions in Parliament (chapter 4), the president and national executive (chapter 5), and the courts and administration of justice (chapter 8).
“Simply put, it gives the power to legislate to the National Assembly and the National Council of Provinces, the power to develop and implement policy and legislation to the executive, and the power to adjudicate matters to the courts.”
“The principle of separation of powers recognises the functional independence of branches of government. On the other hand, the principle of checks and balances focuses on the importance of ensuring that the constitutional order prevents the branches of government from usurping power from one another. In this sense, it anticipates and seeks to prevent the intrusion of one branch of government on the terrain of another,” said Mbete.
Quoting a Constitutional Court judgment delivered 11 years ago in the Doctors for Life International v Speaker of the National Assembly and Others, Mbete said: “The constitutional principle of separation of powers requires that other branches of government refrain from interfering in parliamentary proceedings. This principle is not simply an abstract notion; it is reflected in the very structure of government. The structure of the provisions entrusting and separating powers between the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government reflects the concept of separation of powers.”
Parliament has lost a number of court cases to opposition parties in the past few years, with the March 2016 Constitutional Court judgment on Nkandla being the most devastating ruling for it.
Earlier this month, the Constitutional Court heard arguments on a case by opposition parties calling for a secret vote in the motion of no confidence against President Jacob Zuma.
When the United Democratic Movement requested Mbete to allow a secret ballot for the motion that was scheduled for April 18, she responded that neither the National Assembly rules nor the Constitution made provision for the secret ballot.
The Speaker therefore has no authority in law to alter such provisions, said Parliament in a statement.
Mbete – who is also ANC national chairperson – was the latest ANC leader to discourage politicians from relying on the courts to resolve parliamentary disputes. Her comrades in the ANC, including Zuma, previously accused the opposition of trying to rule through the courts, and accused the courts of “overreaching”.
Mbete announced that Parliament had been allocated R2.2 billion, including MPs’ remuneration, which she decried for being for “unacceptably low”. She revealed that Parliament had asked for R2.9 billion.
She said Parliament’s leadership supported the view that an ad hoc committee be established to work towards finalising how best political parties could be afforded more funding by the fiscus, including the regulation of private funding for political parties.
