The chair of parliament’s portfolio committee on communications, the ANC’s Khusela Sangoni Diko, is digging in for a fight with communications minister Solly Malatsi over the latter’s decision to withdraw the contentious SABC Bill.
Diko said on Sunday that Malatsi’s criticism in an article in the Sunday Times at the weekend of the speaker of the national assembly for reportedly refusing to withdraw the bill from parliament must be “condemned”.
Malatsi – a Democratic Alliance MP in the government of national unity – ordered the withdrawal of the bill after it was widely panned by civil society groups, including the SOS Coalition, Media Monitoring Africa and the South African National Editors’ Forum.
The bill is urgent given the SABC’s need for a new funding model, but Malatsi has insisted it needs to be withdrawn for major changes to be made before being resubmitted to parliament. It’s not exactly clear why the ANC is vehemently opposed to the bill’s withdrawal, especially given Malatsi’s promise that it will be reintroduced in parliament without a lengthy delay.
Diko’s criticism of Malatsi comes after the minister was quoted in the Sunday Times (paywall) as saying that national assembly speaker, the ANC’s Thoko Didiza, was in violation of parliamentary rules by failing to withdraw the SABC Bill, despite his instruction to do so.
Malatsi was quoted by the newspaper as saying that it was “astounding” that more than a month after being informed of his decision, she had still not done so.
Custodian
“The fundamental thing here is that the speaker is the custodian of the national assembly rules. If the minister writes to the speaker to say withdraw this bill … there is no other option for the speaker to do any other thing,” Malatsi reportedly told the newspaper.
But Diko hit back on Sunday in a statement in which she said Malatsi’s “action is not only unwarranted in its spirited pursuit to unilaterally withdraw the bill but is also unconstitutional”.
“The committee has never accepted the withdrawal of the bill by the minister. It has instead sought clarity from the executive on the minister’s authority for the unilateral withdrawal of the bill before parliament. It bears repeating that bills before parliament from the executive do not belong to individual ministers but to cabinet as a whole,” she said.
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“Malatsi’s attempts to dismiss constitutional procedure as mere ‘convention’ or a ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ is not just incorrect – it is a dangerous misrepresentation of the law. The constitution, to which all members of cabinet are bound, explicitly states in section 85(2) that executive authority is vested in the president who exercises such authority together with other members of cabinet to, among others, prepare and initiate legislation,” Diko said.
“As such, no single minister, including Malatsi, has today or ever had the authority or power to unilaterally introduce or withdraw bills in parliament without the consent of cabinet.”
She continued: “For our part as the committee, the amendment of the SABC Bill will be among the first orders of business in the new year. While Malatsi has raised some valid concerns regarding the powers to be accorded to the minister to appoint board members of the proposed commercial subsidiary of the SABC, his other objection regarding the absence of a funding model in the current version of the bill is unfounded, flimsy and inconsequential.
Read: What’s next for South Africa’s troubled public broadcaster?
“We trust that when the minister takes the opportunity to present the department’s responses to the committee, he will also concede that, unless the SABC Bill is a money bill, ministers cannot legislate a funding model from the fiscus. To this end, we urge the minister to cease dilly-dallying on this point and to act with urgency in developing the funding model, which the SABC Bill provides a legislative framework for and which the SABC desperately needs.” — © 2024 NewsCentral Media
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