Committee to weigh up North West intervention

The National Council of Provinces (NCOP) has established an ad hoc committee to oversee the national government’s section 100 [of the Constitution] intervention in the North West‚ after the entire provincial government was placed under administration by President Cyril Ramaphosa.

The ad hoc committee will comprise of 19 full-time and alternate MPs from the ANC‚ the DA‚ the EFF and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP).

As the majority party in the NCOP, the ANC has been designated 11 MPs on the committee‚ the DA three and the EFF and the IFP two apiece.

Veteran ANC MP and the NCOP’s chairman of the select committee on finance, Charl de Beer, has been elected head of the ad hoc committee.

De Beer said one of the urgent matters they needed to attend to was to get a full briefing from the Cabinet interministerial committee on the North West led by Minister in the Presidency Nkosazana DlaminiZuma on their findings into the governance issues in the troubled province.

Advocate Modibedi Phindela‚ the secretary of the NCOP‚ said the ad hoc committee had up to 180 days to investigate whether or not the section 100 intervention was necessary.

Phindela said in terms of section 100 of the Constitution and the rules of the NCOP‚ the ad hoc committee was at liberty to engage with other committees of the institution and the intervention teams.

“In terms of the resolution which was adopted by the House for the establishment of this committee‚ one of the issues noted in the resolution was that the intervention cuts across [all] the departments in the North West and that’s why the ad hoc committee has been established,” Phindela said.