South Africa’s Parliament: Awake, but still finding its feet

Today OUTA releases its 7th annual Parliamentary Oversight Report, titled The Review Nobody Escapes. The 2025 edition shines a bright, persistent light on how effectively South Africa’s 7th Parliament is fulfilling its constitutional duty to hold the executive to account.

This year’s report draws on insights derived from the ParliMeter dashboard, developed by OUTA, the Parliamentary Monitoring Group (PMG) and OpenUp, and co-funded by the European Union. It reviews the parliamentary committees, as well as oversight visits and public engagement activities. It reflects on progress made by the 7th Parliament, but it also exposes attendance patterns, delays and follow-up inconsistencies.

A new kind of Parliament

The Government of National Unity (GNU) emerged from the 2024 general elections and brought together 10 political parties, ending three decades of single-party dominance. This power-sharing arrangement between the ANC, DA, IFP, Patriotic Alliance, GOOD, PAC, Freedom Front Plus, UDM, Rise Mzansi and Al Jama-ah has re-shaped Parliament’s internal dynamics. For the first time since 1994, accountability is not concentrated in one dominant party but dispersed across many. That diversity has brought more robust debate and cross-party cooperation but also new tensions about who ultimately enforces accountability.

Energy without consequence

Between June 2024 and June 2025, parliamentary committees held 1 165 meetings, nearly double the number recorded in the closing years of the 6th Parliament. MPs submitted over 6 700 written questions, but only about one-third were answered within deadline. The data reveal a paradox: Parliament is working harder; however, not necessarily smarter. Oversight remains too often reactive rather than preventive. Committees expose corruption and inefficiency, yet few findings result in sanctions or reform.

Oversight in action: The good, the bad and the telling

• For the Portfolio Committee on Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development, during its February 2025 oversight visit to KwaZulu-Natal, the committee exposed governance failings at the Ingonyama Trust Board, prompting calls for legislative review, a model of effective oversight identifying systemic failure and recommending reform.
• The Portfolio Committee on Basic Education conducted oversight visits to schools in rural provinces which revealed ongoing shortages of teachers, scholar transport and learning materials. Strong recommendations were made, but implementation remains painfully slow.
• The Portfolio Committee on Communications and Digital Technologies held hearings with mobile operators which laid bare South Africa’s persistent connectivity gap and unaffordable data costs. The committee urged amendments to the Electronic Communications Act, but progress remains stalled.
• For the Portfolio Committee on Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA), oversight into municipalities such as Mangaung and Maluti-a-Phofung was done to uncovered chronic mismanagement, corruption and infrastructure decay, which are long-known issues still awaiting decisive executive response.
• The Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa) conducted joint work with the Portfolio Committee on CoGTA on municipal audit outcomes which has shown promise, setting an example for collaborative oversight that links financial scrutiny to governance reform.

These case studies reveal both promise and paralysis for a Parliament that is visible and active, but still inconsistent in delivering tangible results.

Participation and transparency on the rise

Public engagement has reached record levels. Between November 2024 and June 2025, more than 1 000 stakeholders – from community organisations to universities and youth networks – participated in parliamentary dialogues, hybrid hearings and civil-society briefings. OUTA welcomes these efforts but warns that participation must produce outcomes. “Listening without acting is not democracy, it’s performance,” the report cautions.

Persistent weaknesses

Despite progress, structural problems persist across committees:

• Delayed enforcement of the Auditor-General’s findings allows financial mismanagement to continue unchecked.
• Capacity constraints in committees such as the Portfolio Committee on Police, the Portfolio Committee on Justice and Constitutional Development, and the Portfolio Committee on Home Affairs weaken follow-through.
• Vacancies and frequent member reshuffling erode institutional memory.
• Legislative bottlenecks remained and issues and, by December 2024, 22 bills were still awaiting presidential assent.

Oversight is happening but often without consequence.

The way forward

OUTA’s report proposes six reforms to turn oversight into impact:

1. Enforce Parliament’s Oversight and Accountability Model with clear sanctions for non-compliance.
2. Link public-service professionalisation to measurable performance outcomes.
3. Expand open-data dashboards tracking committee resolutions and ministerial responses.
4. Institutionalise hybrid participation with transparent feedback loops.
5. Strengthen cross-committee collaboration, replicating successful models like Scopa-CoGTA.
6. Publish quarterly performance scorecards on attendance, response times and oversight follow-up.

These practical steps would move Parliament from activity to accountability, and from visibility to impact.

A moment of truth

The 7th Parliament has the tools, constitutional authority, public backing and multi-party legitimacy essential to rebuilding trust in democratic institutions. What it needs now is the will to act with conviction.

As OUTA’s report concludes: “Democracy survives not by the strength of elections alone, but by the vigilance of institutions that hold power to account.”

Parliament is awake. The question is whether it will now learn to walk with purpose.

More information

A soundclip with comment by Dr Rachel Fischer, OUTA Parliamentary Engagement and Research Manager, is here.

OUTA’s 7th Parliamentary Oversight Report, The review nobody escapes, is here.

More OUTA reports on parliamentary oversight are here.

The ParliMeter dashboard is here.