PARLIAMENT OVERSIGHT REPORT   

OUTA has a small team in Cape Town to monitor Parliament’s work on holding Government to account.

State Capture to date is said to have cost South Africa approximately R100bn. 

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This is our team’s report on how Parliament’s committees investigated state capture. This includes assessing how the committees used OUTA’s report on state capture, No Room to Hide: A President Caught in the Act, which on 28 June 2017 was presented to Parliament, the Chief Whips of all political parties represented there and various law enforcement agencies. This report is essentially a legal case file to encourage prosecution: a compilation of certain information already in the public domain with the addition of incriminating data sourced from the now infamous Gupta-emails in detail.

A strong Constitutional Democracy is built on an independent Parliament that holds the executive to account without fear or favour. The parliamentary committees are the engine room of that work, where MPs from different parties interrogate the work of the Executive arm of government.

We found that MPs often failed to hold the Executive to account, due to incapacity or a lack of political will.

Ministers and deputy ministers did not attend committee meetings, until the departure of former President Zuma and his replacement with President Ramaphosa.

While there appears to be a lack of action taken by various important committees around corruption and maladministration generally, there are also signs of hope in the determination of many individual MPs to ensure that the rule of law reigns in the public sector. This shows that personal values of integrity, accountability, honesty and justice can and must be visibly ingrained in the day-to-day behaviour of influential public office bearers.

OUTA will continue to examine MP performance, thereby empowering citizens to hold our MPs accountable.