DA asks Deputy President Mabuza to reconvene Parliament  

15 January 2021

The Democratic Alliance (DA) has written to Deputy President David Mabuza, in his capacity as Leader of Government Business, to ask that Parliament be reconvened so that its members can take up their rightful place of executing their sworn oath of office and get back to work.

After exhausting various avenues and numerous requests to the Speaker of the National Assembly, Ms. Thandi Modise, for Parliament to reconvene on urgent matters, I have now reached out to the Deputy President for his intervention.

South Africa is currently facing a barrage of challenges, and Parliament has a duty and resources to address the many issues concerning South Africans. These include:

Confusion, frustration and uncertainty regarding the vaccine programme;

A Home Affairs Department that has been instructed to stop their basic functions such as issuing smart identity documents, marriage licenses and other critical services;

A humanitarian crisis at our borders;

A South African Police Service that has been deployed to stop surfers and anyone trying to enter the sea or estuaries. This, while women and children continue to be raped and murdered at alarming rates;

A hospitality industry literally on its knees as hundreds of establishments shut their doors and cause massive unemployment and permanent economic devastation;

A social grants system that has all but collapsed, and has left the most vulnerable of society treated with indignity, humiliation, and pain;

Car licensing collapsing resulting in many breaking the law due to no fault of their own;

Learners who are terrified of what the academic year ahead holds for them;

Hospital facilities around the country completely unable to assist the ill due to a failure of the Health Department to use the initial hard lockdown period to prepare the system;

Further rolling blackouts which can kill the few businesses that managed to survive the lockdown period, even though the President himself promised the country that blackouts and the effects of the failures at Eskom would be a distant memory for South Africans over five and a half years ago;

An energy sector that remains in the clutches of those who seek to hold on to a monopolistic and outdated system created by Eskom and who refuse to move into a new era of energy supply;

Municipalities across the country unable to deliver the very basic of service due to corruption and incompetence of public servants; and

A Parliament whose Speaker refuses to see the importance of Members of Parliament being called together to act in the best interests of South Africans; call urgent meetings to debate these issues and start the process of rectification before it is literally too late to do anything.

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit South Africa’s shores, the DA expressed its willingness to assist the government in its response. This offer is not off the table, and we have consistently given inputs where government was lacking and criticism where the government had failed.

South Africa urgently needs non-partisan solutions and cooperation to assist the government in dealing with this long list of challenges.

Parliament is the vehicle to achieve this. We have a job to do and we should not be stopped from robustly executing our role.

Issued by Natasha Mazzone, Chief Whip of the Official Opposition, 15 January 2021