Source document: https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/1698834932803.pdf (South Africa)
SPEECH BY THE DEPUTY CHAIRPRSON OF THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF PROVINCES, HONOURABLE S E LUCAS, ON THE OCCASION OF THE THREE SPHERE PLANNING SESSION Delineating key priorities for consolidation and Implementation emanating during the final year of the sixth dispensation Date: 29-30 March 2023 Venue: NCOP Chamber Time: 10h00 Chairperson of the National Council of Provinces Members of the National Executive Council Members of the Provincial Executive Councils Members of the NCOP Members of the Provincial Legislatures Chairperson of the Financial Fiscal Commission Chairperson on the Gender Commission Deputy Chairperson of the Planning Commission of South Africa Programme Director, allow me to welcome all of you to the National Council of Provinces Three Sphere Planning session.
Parliament Strategic Vision is to build an effective people’s Parliament that is responsive to the needs of the people, and that is driven by the ideal of realizing a better quality of life for all the people of South Africa.

Its mission is to represent and act as a voice of the people, in fulfilling Parliaments Constitutional functions of passing laws and overseeing executive actions.
1 Based on the vision and mission of Parliament and the Constitutional Requirements, Parliament hereby develops mechanisms to guide its work on Oversight.

The South African Constitution is imbued with the letter and spirit of Intergovernmental relations.
The drafters of the Constitution envisaged a multi-tiered Constitutional arrangement, whereby the different spheres of government would cooperate, consult and coordinate amongst each other, while simultaneously respecting the powers and functions of others.

The Constitution further requires co-operative government between three spheres of government.
In this regard, the parliamentary oversight process, as it relates to interactions with the people and the government must seek to adhere to the values of co-operative government.

It must at all material times, take into account the circumstances, material interests and budget of other government and organs of state, in order to ensure a sustained advance, towards realizing the ideals of our transformation agenda.
Because of the Character of the National Council of Provinces and its composition as a house of provinces, the NCOP is strategically placed to ensure that there is coherent planning and ultimately seamless service delivery at all levels of government.

Honorable Chairperson, It is within this context that we are having the Three Sphere Planning Session.

The session seeks to establish coherence in the Three Sphere planning and implementation processes.
Through this three sphere planning mechanism, we seek to address our deficiencies as the broader governance construct and strengthen collaboration between different spheres of government, to accelerate the 2 implementation of the National Development Plan.

This three sphere planning session also seeks to ensure that the appropriate mechanisms are put in place, so as to effectively address policy implementation weaknesses and coordination disjunctures, across the three spheres of government.
The session also seeks to identify and address, underlying weakness across the political and bureaucratic interface, which often impede the implementation of key development priorities.
The session further seeks to establish and institutionalise coherence in three sphere (planning and implementation processes, particularly as they relate to the development catalysing priorities of the National Development Plan), while enabling the NCOP to perform its constitutional mandate, to appropriately serve as a three-sphere coordination and implementation construct, through targeted and outcome based oversight.
The programme further seeks to delineate critical priorities, as responsive to South Africa’s broader developmental landscape, while further invoking the NCOP’s Three-Sphere coordination role, in order to fast-track the implementation of priorities that require Three-Sphere collaboration for effective implementation.

Review of Intergovernmental Relations South Africa is one of the first countries to formulate Intergovernmental Relations.
The Intergovernmental Relations of our country has gone through phases.

The first phase from 1994-2005 was predominately informal and spontaneous.

3 The second phase from 2005 to ongoing, was predominately statute driven after the enactment of the Intergovernmental Relations Framework Act(IGR).

However, over the years, our IGR has functioned far below the required standard and the forum that exist often become forums of dominance, rather than forums of cooperation and consultation.
Uncertainty is rife about the status of intergovernmental relations decisions and recommendations, as well as who is responsible for the follow-up of recommendations.

To illustrate the failure of Intergovernmental Relations Framework, in the year 2020, President Ramaphosa made a public pronouncement that government intends to allocate 40% of public procurement expenditure towards women-owned enterprises.

Several years down the line the President stated target is not being implemented.
Possible factors contributing to the failure to reach 40% expenditure target are the lack of clear draft policy documents and the lack of clear legislative provisions and guidelines in existing procurement legislative frameworks.
There is no horizontal integration between activities of various government departments and there is lack of understanding of what IGR means by both Politicians and bureaucrats, hence, we seem to be failing in the implementation key policy priorities of our country like the National Development Plan.
Moving Forward As we move in unison to strengthen our planning and coordination processes across the three spheres, we must remain cognizant of the urgency to implement with utmost speed, the urgency to be responsive to the needs of our people and the urgency to deepen the impact of our work.
4 We must also remain cognizant, that every province has its own unique development challenges, which must remain at the centre of response plans, budgeting agendas, implementation processes, as well as oversight agendas.

we must be able to crystalize key deliverables that must be recorded, before the end of the sixth dispensation, particularly in line with the country’s overarching development priorities.
We must further be able to put measures and markers in place, to enable an accelerated move towards implementing our development priorities in the sixth dispensation.

As the legislative sector, our Committees may need to look at their mandates and re-assess their work keeping in mind what they would like to achieve by the end of the term, which is in few Months away.

Keeping in mind the issues raised by the President during SONA and by various State of the Province Addresses.
The District Development Model must move away from being a concept to a viable instrument that will give effect to the vision of a Joint-Up government.

Be in a position to can provide us with an opportunity to proactively interrogate, for instance, the cooperation and collaboration of the different spheres of government and organs of the state to attend to the challenges that impact service provision.
Conclusion Programme Director, as I have already indicated, we are few Months before the end of the sixth administration.

There are a number of things we may have wanted to pursue, but this is the moment to re-examine and ensure that we prioritise those interventions that will benefit our people.

5 For the NCOP, it is a critical year for delineating critical priorities to shape our Oversight Agenda, particularly for purposes of ensuring a targeted policy implementation drive.
Flowing from the resolutions of this two day session, we intend to convene a consultative session with the broader South African local government association, including the Minister of COGTA, MECs of COGTA across provinces, in order to jointly delineate the most pressing service delivery challenges to be addressed in the medium term.
WE need to put the appropriate support systems in place for local government, by strengthening three sphere cooperation, through a targeted focus on the services that communities urgently need.

We further intend to launch an initiative titled “Project Accelerate,” through which we intend to galvanize three sphere cooperation and collaboration, which will be actualised through strategic social compacts, intended to accelerate the implementation of key development priorities.
This mechanism will serve as our tracking, monitoring, evaluation and impact assessment construct, focusing on accelerating the implementation of strategically delineated priorities, which hold the potential to meaningfully improve our people’s quality of life.
WE intend to institutionalise this process, by developing a cluster of interlinked tracking, monitoring, oversight, impact assessment and report back mechanisms, which will run in tandem with the implementation timelines to be articulated by the planning session, in line with Parliament’s transformative developmental agenda.
In recognising the NCOP as an evolving apex chamber for advancing South Africa’s transformative agenda, it is imperative to emphasize that 6 the NCOP rules were updated in December 2021, in order to address weaknesses in three sphere coordination, particularly in relation to tracking the implementation of key priorities.
Rule 11 of the NCOP Rules, which articulate the functions of the Deputy Chairperson, imbues the imperative of developing a spatial-intelligence oversight strategy (across South Africa’s broader developmental landscape), to complement existing mechanisms and systems.
Rule 11 further empowers the NCOP, through the assigned functions to the Deputy Chairperson, to exercise political oversight and three-sphere coordination, in the referral and processing of executive undertakings, so as to track NCOP oversight deliverables.
I am hopeful that this will be a productive session and that in the end we will have a clear indication of where we want to focus our work for the remainder of the term, while developing the appropriate tracking and impact assessment mechanisms, to accelerate the implementation of the development priorities of the NDP.

Thank you 7