Transparency at all levels
MORE transparency is required now to stop state capture and process capture. The Constitutional Court has ruled that politicians should be allowed to vote via secret ballot, so as to allow a vote of conscience, thus stopping voting on party political instructions. The highest court has ruled on the need for elected politicians to vote according to conscience.
Speaking to fellow grassroots civil society members on Friday, June 23, we found, however, it laughable how the likes of the honourable James Selfe (MP), can be cheering the ruling and supporting the call by the honourable Leigh-Ann Mathys (MP) for South Africans to write to parliamentarians asking them to vote according to conscience and not along party instructions, as he surely knows his colleagues in the Western Cape provincial government and the City of Cape Town object to the same being applied in the city council and Western Cape legislature.
This hypocrisy is, however, no laughing matter, seeing that when Capetonians did the same to his colleagues in the city council, regarding our opposition to development on the Philippi Horticultural Area and at Kampala (agricultural land in Durbanville), his political party prohibited its councillors from listening to their constituencies, and forced them to vote along party instructions that supported developer plans.
While we at grassroots civil society celebrated the recent announcement by the honourable Jackson Mthembu (MP) that the ruling party will be placing legislation before Parliament that requires transparency around party political funding, the ruling by the Concourt now will surely require even more transparency than before.
What we thus now need is transparency around all income received by politicians. I recently requested my ward councillor to inform our civic AGM what his telephone allowance was, and whether his allowances were used in only fulfilling his ward duties. I was met with a stony silence.
Surely Mthembu, Selfe and Mathys should propose a bill that allows for full disclosure by all elected politicians?