OUTA's sixth annual Parliamentary Oversight Report labels the 6th Parliament as "lamentable" and highlights shortcomings in 11 key parliamentary committees. The report outlines steps for the 7th Parliament to improve accountability and oversight. 

OUTA’s recently released sixth annual Parliamentary Oversight Report, titled Laudable or lamentable? The 6th Parliament’s legacy, gives a detailed review of South Africa’s 6th Parliament’s performance over the past year, as well as its five-year impact.

The report covers 2019 to 2024, a period shaped by the Covid-19 pandemic, economic instability, state capture fallout, and the financial collapse of major state-owned enterprises. The 6th Parliament dealt with numerous crises, including service delivery failures, rising organised crime, and ongoing issues in healthcare, financial management, and oversight, highlighting deep-rooted problems in government.

OUTA’s report reviews the performance of key parliamentary portfolio committees in the National Assembly, assessing how well they oversee the executive, based on their legacy reports and Budgetary Review and Recommendation Reports (BRRRs). It focuses on three main questions:

1. What challenges and opportunities did the committees face?

2. How effectively did they handle these challenges?

3. What recommendations can be made for the incoming 7th Parliament?

Overall, OUTA found the 6th Parliament’s oversight performance to be poor, marking the sixth consecutive year they have criticised Parliament for inadequate oversight.

Our report shows that the portfolio committees struggle to hold the executive to account. As quoted from the report: “This is what underlies our finding that almost all of the committees we assessed are lamentable, and thus our finding that Parliament, overall, is lamentable, as it has no real method of holding inept or dysfunctional ministers to account and thus fails to do so.” 

Curious to see why we came to the “lamentable” conclusion? Read our press release here.

The full 6th Parliamentary Oversight Report can be found here.