DA chief whip Natasha Mazzone said Dlamini-Zuma is one of the ministers who regularly fails to account to parliament through the mechanism of parliamentary questions. “We have also asked Ramaphosa to take action against a number of other poor performing ministers.”
Several members of the executive do not respect their duty to be accountable to Parliament, while many of those who do answer questions are evasive and do not respect the expectation that answers must be complete and honest, Mazzone said.
“Parliamentary questions are a key mechanism of parliamentary oversight of the executive. It is the primary instrument with which members of parliament get information from executive members. “
According to the DA, Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Dlamini-Zuma has not answered any of the party’s 24 written questions since February 13, and has allegedly replied all along that the requested information is not yet available.
That was apparently also Dlamini-Zuma’s answer last year to 108 of the 110 parliamentary questions addressed to her. She later answered 19 of the questions, but some of the answers were apparently of poor quality.
“Her dismissive and superficial treatment of questions is a deeply worrying insight into her understanding of the constitutional requirement that she must account to Parliament. This approach to accountability is unacceptable and the president should at least reprimand the minister for this, ”Mazzone said.
