SCOPA's Structural Issues: discussion

Meeting report

PUBLIC ACCOUNTS STANDING COMMITTEE
19 February 2002
SCOPA'S STRUCTURAL ISSUES: DISCUSSION

Chairperson: Mr F Beukman (NNP)

MINUTES
[This is a transcript of a closed meeting, produced by the Public Accounts Committee Secretariat.]

[Chairperson] I just want to reflect on the agenda which you have received a copy of. By agreement last week we are beginning with our discussion on what we have termed here "SCOPA's structural issues". I am hoping that that will end before 12 o'clock. We will have a bit of time to move our planning forward to perhaps get report backs from the workgroups who sat last week and to get the wheels of the Committee turning. At 12 o'clock we have the Finnish delegation who as I understand are their Sub Committee for Administration and Control of the Finance Committee. It is a fairly big delegation. There might be as many as 20 of them. I guess that would be a meeting that would last about a half an hour to three quarters of an hour. So if we have your agreement on that as the way forward today we do come to our first issue. If I can pick up where we left off last week, it in the main concerned a letter which I sent to all committee members raising some issues and asking for your consideration of those issues. The issues which I personally feel very strongly about. Issues which I feel need us to reflect on and to undertake whatever correction is needed in order to get the Committee on a sound footing so that we can go forward with confidence and in a productive way. That the invitation as it is in the letter, and as was repeated last week, is for other members to also put forward issues that they feel could inhabit our progress and less resolved. So we need at the offset to get all the issues on the table. I would hope that we would not get into protracted and messy discussion or heated argument about the issues. What we really need to do here is establish whether we have agreement or whether we do not agree. And where we have agreement let us ask ourselves how we can secure those agreements, so that we are convinced that we have genuine agreement and that we do not have to worry about those issues going forward. From my side I do not have too much to say. I think the issues that I have got on the table are quite self evident, but I do owe it to anybody if they want clarity on the issues I raised, I will be happy to give them clarity and likewise with other issues that other members might care to bring home. I do hope that we are in agreement and let us agree on what we need to fix and how we are going to fix it or let us disagree on that. Let us not waste time on unproductive argument. As indicated, if we keep out of the messy arguments we could complete this report and exercise before 12 o'clock and then move onto the issues I mentioned, the planning issues. Would anybody have any other views on the approach to this first part of the session?

[Mr V Smith] I think the first thing we need to do is to agree that this is going to be a closed meeting. Last week we hinted at it. We did not get to an agreement to that. I think that it must be recorded that we are taking a decision that this must be a meeting closed to the media. And if we want to address the media on this matter we need to agree how we do that after this meeting. I am not sure if that was agreed to last week, but my understanding is that an idea was put on the table. So therefore I am formally proposing that this meeting is closed to the media and that we can address the media at the conclusion of this meeting. I need clarity on that. I am putting a proposal and I am not sure if there are any counters to that.

[Chairperson] It is my recollection, and I see that it does say in the minutes in reference to last week's meeting under the first point, a decision is taken. And the very first decision says as follows" "that a closed meeting of the Committee to be on 19 February 2002 to discuss the contents of the letter sent to members by the Chairperson." So I think we have that agreement. Regarding whether we talk to the media or not or how we do it, could we just see how things work out and perhaps reflect on that at the end?

[Ms R Taljaard] Just on a point of clarification and it does arise by virtue of the closed meeting which was a decision, and an agreed decision of this Committee last week, that we are indeed still making a recording of this meeting. I think it would be very important that we have transcripts to reflect upon, because this is an important meeting.

[Chairperson] Yes there will be a recording and transcripts available.

[Mr V Smith] The first thing that we would want to say as the ANC is that we welcome the initiative that you have taken to write this letter. I think also that we must state upfront that the ANC accepts without any reservations the principle of an opposition Chair in this Committee. However, we must also make it very clear that that acceptance of an opposition Chair in no ways will compromise the ANC's principles of democracy, of ensuring unity in this Committee and effective working of this Committee. We are not going to compromise that for fear of being seen to be disagreeing with the Chairperson of this Committee or any member of any political party. I think we must make that very clear from the offset. We also believe Chairperson that you do owe us explanations of your letter. Now the type of explanation we are talking about, and we requested a closed meeting, because I think we want to be very frank with each other whilst very respectful for each other. I think the type of explanations that you owe us Chairperson are, first of all, when we read this letter, as the ANC, the very first part of your letter says that you encourage members to make constructive suggestions in this regard and you go on to say "the changes that I requires as follows". Now for us in the ANC that leaves a question mark. If these are the changes you require, how negotiable is this document? I think you need to explain that to us. When you are leading people, we would have imagined that it is more useful for us to discuss these matters. It appeared to us in the study group that it was quite autocratic, that is was very not negotiable and therefore it was problematic for us. So we want you to clarify how negotiable this is in light of the understanding that we have of the ANC when we are reading the tone of the letter. I also think, as the ANC, we have in analyzing this thing a feeling that there is a sense of talking down to us as the Chairperson. This is the autocratic part of the matter that we are raising. This is the sense that we got. It seems like we are being spoken down to from the Chairperson. We also felt that you must explain this initiative, and understand we said that it was an initiative that we welcome, in the context of us having gone through a three-day workshop dealing with these matters last year August till September, in the context of us having agreed to a Business Plan, accepted and adopted by this Committee in terms of our work method, and in the context of us having gone overseas for two weeks on a study tour ostensibly to go and learn best practices and come back and share it with the Committee where we can discuss, debate, accept recommendations and/or reject the recommendations of the study tour. We are of the view that this letter does not take that into consideration. I think as to the detail when we get to the bullet points that you have, we have positions on all of those bullet points. I do not know that I want to get involved in any of the bullet points in terms of detail. We think that you should clarify those broad issues for us first. And having clarified those broad issues for us we are then, we think, in a position to discuss each bullet point and give you what our views are on those bullet points and any other matters that you have. I will request clarity on those broad issues that we have raised. This is the view of the ANC. It is not a personal view. It is a matter that we have discussed at length yesterday and we felt, as the ANC, that we should afford you an opportunity to explain those broad issues. Thereafter we can get into the bullet points and deal with them one by one and get them out of the way as soon as possible. For us, we do not think that we need much time on this matter. I am hoping that I have reflected the views of the ANC. We agreed that we were going to do it in this fashion. I do not want other members of the ANC to feel restrictive if they think I have not expressed their views accurately.

[Chairperson] In keeping with what I said upfront that I do not intend and feel the need to get into any long discussions, I am going to stick to that, but I will try to in a simple way answer the concerns you have raised. I think over the recess I really had to ask some questions mainly about the Committee. I think that it is the Committee that comes first. It should come first in all our deliberations and it is as a Committee that we have a joint responsibility for. And as a secondary issue I had to ask myself about myself sitting in this chair and what I could or could not do, what I was likely to be able to do or not likely to do. But in order to really address those very big questions I did my homework, and perhaps it is my background as a researcher, where I took all the transcripts from the meetings last year and the minutes and I went through it and I have reconstructed in my own mind how the year had gone. And my analysis, for better or for worse, was confirmed quite early in the study that as I went through I became more and more confident that there are fundamental problems in this Committee. When I got towards the end of my exercise and looked at the types of discussion we are having and the way we were dealing with issues, even after our two-day workshop last year, even after agreeing to our Business Plan, sadly I was convinced that we had not dealt with those problems which keeps us divided as a Committee and which keeps us unproductive as a Committee, which makes this Committee let Parliament down. That is my analysis. One can close one's eyes and hope that it goes away, that we find each other as individuals and creatively become constructive. I feel from the Chair one has a special responsibility and maybe it is a kind of leadership one attempts to try and provide a way forward and the timing is such that when you begin a new year you say let us not just go and hope. So I took the initiative to pick up the issues that I have identified in my exercise and reduce them to paper the way I have. It was not my intention to make it offensive. I would agree the letter is a very cool letter and to the point. I think I would defend the language as not being aggressive. To me it is a serious matter. Yes, Mr Smith, I would say these issues, in my view, and I am only one person in this Committee with one vote, they are non-negotiables. I really, from my understanding, am saying that unless we deal with these situations I am very concerned that we are going to have problems on the way forward. I cannot think of anything worse than in a few month's time things catching up on us again. The next time one of those issues that will be captured in one of these points here come along and bedevils the Committee and where we find we are partway down the road the wheels are falling off again. I do not even know if the wheels are on at this point. So hopefully in that brief explanation I have covered where I am coming from. And, of course, central to all of this is that I have to ask myself the question without these corrections taking place is it possible for me to chair this Committee effectively? I cannot stay here because I want to be Chair of SCOPA. The Committee has to come first. So to me, as I have said, I feel very strongly about these issues and I am really hoping to get agreement on them. But, of course, I will listen to arguments and I am happy to be proven wrong on a point or two. I really want to go away from this meeting having listen carefully to what everybody said and to think it through. I hope that that is an adequate response to the point.

[Mr N Bruce] My first point is on the chairmanship. It seems to that if the principle is accepted that the Chairman of the Committee comes from an opposition party then there must be consensus agreement within the Committee here that his decisions in the running of the Committee must predominate. One cannot sit here and negotiate over every decision taken by the Chairman. I hope you will forgive me for saying that I think the Chairman has also to provide leadership and it is not only keeping order in the Committee, but the leadership of the Committee, which is enormously important, and if we fight political battles over decisions taken by the Chairman that we are never going to get down to the issues at hand. I think over the past year you have been enormously indulgent. I have sat here and listened to us get involved in debate on modalities and not on the issues that this Committee needs to deal with. We all agree that the leadership comes from the Chair, whether it be from you or anywhere else. If there are very sharp disagreements on the Chair then we must go to Parliament and raise the matter there. But if we carry on the way we are going now we are simply going to get back into arguing over modalities and not get on with the work that this Committee needs to do. On you letter that you have written to us, it seems to me, and my interpretation of it, was that you were setting the remit of the Committee as widely as possible and I agree with that, but also, that while that remit is wide we need to focus very carefully and sharply on the matter of financial efficiency because that is our job. So I think the question of whether this is authoritarian or not really does not come into it. What we need to decide here today is that are we going to accept your style of chairmanship of the Committee or do we want something else. But to go back to long arguments over modalities is going to be destructive of the work of this Committee and Parliament.

[Chairperson] I must say I welcome the ANC's earlier commitment that we retain an opposition Chair. I think Mr Bruce's point is an important point. I just hope that people would have the courage to say to the Chair that we do not think you are the right sort of Chair for this sort of Committee. So it does not have to be a media event where the ANC kicks out the Chair. It does not have to happen like that at all. It can be a quite discussion and we can resolve it. I want you to know that that ball is in your court. Also one thing that we need to reflect on and perhaps we need to wait until, if we are going to follow Mr Smith's suggestion here to go through point by point, I think the issues of principle upon which this model which have an opposition Chair is formulated, it often seems to me that we have differences of opinion as to what that really means. Whether that Chairperson is simply a token or whether there is a bigger principle behind it having a governing party saying we want an opposition Chairperson there and why we want to do that. Perhaps if the need arises we can go into that type of principle when we get to that point. If there are no other interventions at this point, Mr Smith you had a sense of how the ANC would like to follow the course of issues, can I ask you to guide us?
[Mr B Kannemeyer] Just in terms of the process, for us looking at the issues, the five or six bullets that you have raised, somehow it seems to me it is going to be a very mechanical argument or discussion that we are going to have. I am one of the people also who strongly support, and Mr smith have definitely spoken for me also when he said that we support and applaud the initiative that you have taken by putting something on the table. If the purpose of this is to get a Committee that will be functioning in the best interest of the people whom we are seeking to serve, I would think underpinning that would be the question of mutual respect towards one another. I have had great trouble trying to understand why it is presented to us, and in fact you have said on a question from Mr Smith that it is non-negotiable. I do not understand what we then must discuss now. I am trying to find out as a member of the governing party who is a duly elected Member of Parliament, who in any given democracy would have an opportunity and right to interact and differ with any Chairperson, whether it is a Chairperson from an opposition party or anything else. But when my Chairperson in the first meeting of the year schedule to lay a foundation that will bond this Committee having gone through some tough times, when my Chairperson come in and say the type of leadership I am providing or from now on that I am going to provide is I will put something on the table and it will be non-negotiable. Then for me, with my limited experience and maybe intellect on these type of matters, it leaves me in a bit of uncertainty. It tells me tomorrow and the day thereafter what is next or what can we next expect? I am quite frank with you also on what you have said. If these things are not put in place, if we cannot have the type of things that you would want in place, you would feel uncomfortable you have said, and you would have to consider your position whether you would want to stay here. If this is how you are going to chair the meeting from now on I would want to, and would have to, consider my position whether I can stay at work in these conditions. I support why we said this meeting should be in a closed session so that we can speak frankly and that it not be misinterpreted that when I differ with Dr Woods it is a political thing. I am sitting here as a member who think I have tried to make a valuable contribution to the work of this Committee over the last couple of years. And yes, I have been part of the problems and part of making mistakes, but it think all of us are part of that process. I am appealing and pleading that, and I am saying it with respect, the route you are taking is not going to assist us. I am suggesting that everything that you proposed you could have done without the angle of "I will listen to constructive suggestions, but the changes I require are as follows". And I want to question from the leader of the ANC, you actually said it is non-negotiable. I do not know where we move from that, because what is the purpose of going through it point by point? You said it is non-negotiable. I would want further clarity on that. I know that you have appealed that we do not go through long discussions. You have also said that we do not want a situation where the wheels are going to come off at a later stage. In fact, you have said that you do not know whether the wheels are on currently. In your assessment going through the minutes of the entire year, as you have indicated, you have done an analysis. You have come to a particular conclusion. I think you will agree with me, you said it yourself, that is your view. There are other views. Have you taken the other views into consideration when you decided on five or six points and made it non-negotiable? I submit that probably you did not. I just want to read something that someone said a couple of days ago. It says "in exercising a necessary dose of self-criticism we must open our hearts to conflicting views. I am concerned by the divisions in this House. I will say openly that at times I have problems with the way the Leader of the opposition expresses himself and the nature of his attacks on government. At times he is not sufficiently sensitive about the collective psychology of the majority of South Africans who have been talked down to for centuries. We must learn to listen to him and anyone else in this House. We need to build a democracy based on a plurality of view points". That was said by the leader of the IFP in the President's debate a few days ago. I would want to suggest that we take from that in our processing of this process. If we cannot be big enough to take on board some of these suggestions I think you attempt to resuscitate and restore this Committee is going to have the opposite effect. And even as you as an individual feel that we failed so miserably, I think that you proved yourself that you have got a commitment to this country and that you need to consider whether the route you are taking whether what you feel and what you are convinced about is so important and so important to you that you are prepared to leave a situation where there is a Committee that indeed would be dysfunctional and that indeed would not be preserving the proper purpose. I am appealing that we take on board some of the directions from the Minister of Home Affairs and that when we do this exercise we subject it to self-criticism and that we allow a plurality of views to inform the type of working situation that this Committee arrive about without undermining your role, functioning and powers as Chair. I can agree with much of what Mr Bruce has said. But the reality is that the way you have presented this, two wrongs does not make a right and that is the little mistake you have made in presenting this to us. I am saying that so that we can then agree that probably you withdraw the statement that it is non-negotiable, that it is proposals and that we discuss it and agree on some and disagree on some, and as a collective see how best we can get this Committee back on track.

[Mr B Nair] It appears it is confirmation of the assertions that has been made in this letter. Let me quote here from a newspaper in an interview. Dr Woods said "you are aware of the ANC's members hopes that he would drop out breaking SCOPA's tradition of being chaired by a member of the opposition party". This assertion is repeated in this letter as well, obliquely though. In the second page you refer to the principle underpinning the decision to have an opposition Chairperson. Over the past seven years we have worked together and you have been very industrious and your input at the plenary and group level has been exceptional. We have worked together also in the Finance Portfolio Committee and you have done good work there as well. But over the past year your work in SCOPA in the day-to-day workings has been really minimal. Let me be honest about that. What you have done, in particular, is you have concentrated on the Arms Report and in the course of which, over and over again, I particularly because of our closely to each other emphasise that when we have a tiff and argument it did not necessary follow that we would want you out as Chairperson. You have accepted this, not from me as a person, but from the ANC as such, because you felt uneasy. You also said that you are going through the minutes of the past year. We can also go through the minutes and find something that will refute what you have said. Your findings may be refuted altogether. I agree with what Mr Kannemeyer said just now that you subjectively come to certain conclusions. Anyone reading minutes and documents could look for certain things that are likely to favour your preconceived position. You have made up your mind. It will appear that from the tenure of this letter and what you are saying you are also emphasizing the question that issues raised here are not going to be negotiated. It puts us in various positions in that you have already made up your mind. Your reading of the minutes brings you to certain conclusions and those conclusions are irrevocable. You are clearly demonstrating that you have made up your mind. Far from the ANC, ANC members you alleged, please you know that is not true. Mr Bruce has made the suggestion that we have made your position invidious and difficult. Far from it. We went through trying times and we went through that workshop and worked out a Business Plan and you come with a hair-brain suggestion after all the work that we are confronted with that we should now deal with all the reports at plenary and meet three times a week, even during recess and probably over weekends too. I do not know. It is really crazy. We have constituencies to deal with. Not that we, because I have had to abandon Finance and concentrate on SCOPA work because of the volume of the work. Now we get a suggestion, seriously, that we should abandon the three groups, which was doing a wonderful piece of work, notwithstanding all the restrictions that the Armsdeal Report entailed. Notwithstanding that we were able to produce something at least. And this was recognized at the end of last year when we ended on a happy note. I thought we ended on a good note after the adoption of the Report and we got together to deal with our own Annual Report. I really thought that we were going to start the new year afresh and with new insight into our shortcomings of the past and then make corrections during the course of the year. But even before we start we got this letter. You, Chairperson, went through the minutes and you now assert these were your findings. I have got the minutes too, but we could differ. We could have an opposing view to yours. On very serious issues, except for the Arms thing, we have collective decisions. We collectively decided on issues, even addressing the press etc, collectively because of differences of view, emphasis that was given. We dealt with this thing over time and we resolved it by getting the leadership of all each f the political parties jointly addressing the press on matters that may ……………… in a province. And decisions that were taken by SCOPA were always collectively done after a vigorous debate and discussion. You do not subjectively now say no, I am now going to unilaterally decide on certain issues. I am Chairperson and I am now going to assert my right as Chairperson. What are you talking about? Indeed you are going to accept your right. You will be expressing the collective view of SCOPA, not your own view. What has happened? During the course of last year, let us be honest about this, subjectively you as an individual, because you have held certain views dear to your heart about the Arms issue, you expressed your personal view. Not that of a collective view. You now allege that we, the ANC component of SCOPA, are now being directed and we have become rectories of the Executive. On the contrary, whatever we wanted to say we have said it openly here at SCOPA. Whatever the Executive had to say they did at their level. We challenged the Executive. These are all part of the problems as presented. I do not want to go into the details of the Arms, but suffice to say that what we did was we left this to the investigators to investigate the President's Report etc. We went through the entire process and ultimately presented a Report. Okay, you still have qualms, misgivings and all sorts of problems with the ANC taking a certain position. So have the IFP, the DA, and the whole lot of you. Does it necessary follow that the ANC is taking a political position and you are not, that you and others like you are putting Parliament first and not the Executive? You are not toadies of the Executive. You are toadies of Parliament. You are now the voice of Parliament. Now these are some of the problems that I am confronted with. What we must do, we went through the process, not that we are …………… the Arms Report etc. these were presented to Parliament. That process is continuing. We have got far beyond the SCOPA Report. We have got the Defence Portfolio Committee. Finance made certain suggestions following the minutes realm. There are six or seven Reports. These are far reaching. Should we not interact with them and work out methods of how to get the best and to ensure that the Armsdeal finally is brought to an end. Not necessarily before a thorough investigation that has been suggested in all those Reports. Now to come back to it, let me say this. We have worked as a collective. We are in no way limiting the powers of the Chair. you can employ those powers at any time, but for heaven's sake, just as you have done over the past seven years, you must be the expression also, not of Gavin Woods, of our collective as SCOPA. That is the duty of any Chairperson. They are duty bound to express the views of the collective as a whole, otherwise we can go haywire. We take a collective decision here, tomorrow you can assert something else. This is what has happened. Check all your press reports etc and you will see it bears me out.

[Chairperson] A couple of questions have been put to me which I do not want to deal with in depth. Mr Kannemeyer, I think all of us from time to time feel strongly about issues as to whether what is right or wrong and within us those are non-negotiables and that is personally how I feel about these issues. But if you were fair to me you would have heard what I said, as will be on tape, that that does not preclude discussion. I do not have the power to preclude discussion and I do not have the power to stop us discussing things and we will discuss things to the extent that members want to discuss them and we will have to come to a decision. The reason we are having this meeting is to have members put their views on the tables and to respond to mine. This is a Committee. It is not just about me. I would also like to ask if we can at some stage get back to the issues. The issue here today is about the future of SCOPA with Gavin Woods or not. But to say all the things and express all your feelings about me, maybe we need to keep that for another time. I really think we want to put the Committee on track. One point that Mr Nair raised, just to be fair to the Committee, and amongst these exercises that I did I produced two papers which I will be releasing. So I do not want there t be any nasty surprises for the Committee. The one is my view, which I feel is important to establish for the record, how SCOPA went wrong in its exercising of oversight over the Armsdeal. So that is going to be on permanent record somewhere and, of course, anybody else is entitled to put their views down. I felt I needed to capture the history of that in an analysis. The second paper is my critic of the Joint Investigating Team's Report and that is not a very complimentary critic as you can imagine, but to the extent that it stands up under public scrutiny and whoever else's scrutiny it could bring some discredit on the investigation and indeed on SCOPA's Final Report which was quite gracious about that Report. So I am just mentioning those two. Let us not discuss them on this occasion, but if you want to discuss them on another occasion you are welcome to. I just do not want to have any secrets from the Committee. So on that basis can we go forward knowing that we are talking about taking the Committee forward and there is no limitations despite what I feel inside me of how strongly I feel about issues. That is not a limiting factor for this Committee. We are all entitled to apply our minds and come to a view.

[Mr N Bruce] I came here today earnestly believing that we could move towards a situation of advancing and towards a situation where this Committee can get back to the principle of consensus and that we can go ahead and get on with our job. I think reflecting now on what has happened in the past is really not going to get us any further. I have listened to Mr Kannemeyer and Mr Nair and I am a little bit puzzled as to what points they are actually trying to make. I did not regard that your letter come in front of us as something that limited discussion. I just would like to know from them - is it the fact that you have said that it is non-negotiable that is somehow sticking in their nose or is it the fact that there is something that you have said in the letter, some subject, which they do not like? If it is simply a question of non-negotiable I think it is easily resolved and let us resolve it now and get on with the work. There is a distinction in the impression I am getting from Mr Nair of a "collective". I am uncomfortable with the word "collective". I must tell you the truth. I sit here as an individual and I would feel that I wanted to differ with the Committee if needs be, but that does not mean to say that we should not work towards a consensus. We do not all outside here have to be bound by the decisions of this Committee, but when the Committee does take it we might want to go away and differ with the consensus within the Committee. I appeal to you not to get involved in emotional things like "collective" and what there comes about. It does not necessarily affect our work. We need to work towards consensus, co-operation and personal respect between the members of the Committee.

[Mr B Nair] What I meant by "collective" is we arrive at decisions through consensus. Now you are suggesting that you can have your personal view which you can express in public or anywhere, but when we take a collective decision of anything the Chairperson is expected to give expression to the consensus arrived at. He can give his own view, so can you, but at the same time collectively we came to a certain conclusion. That is what I meant.

[Mr N Bruce] Do you mean that when the Chairman speaks as Chairman he must reflect the consensus or the view of the Committee and that when he speaks as an individual he reflects his own view? I do not have any problem with that.

[Ms R Taljaard] We are here to speak frankly and honestly today and I am going to do that and if people take umbrage and offense they must do so and air their views in turn. This is not an invitation for a cat and dog fight. It is to get the truth out there, because the difficulty is once one divorces any correspondence or any document from the context from which it emerges you are going to sit with distortions. I can see that people are unhappy with the non-negotiable nature of the issues raised in the letter. Now speaking as an individualist' perspective person, I can understand that difficulty and speaking as someone who treasures democracy I can understand that difficulty. I think we need to divorce it from the reasons why the Chairperson crafted this in non-negotiable terms. That comes from particular context. It comes from a particular experience and we cannot divorce the letter from that context because then you will be unhappy in the nature that you are expressing your disquiet about it. This letter comes from a context last year where on a number of occasions, and I have highlighted that when it happened in chamber with Mr Smith and Mr Masithela, where individuals, in fact, you served the role of the Chairperson within a plenary and changed the process, proceedings or the entire scope of the meeting. Now that arose on a number of occasions. It arose in a particular context and we have to be honest about that. It arose in the context of meetings related to the Armsdeal, but it also arose in a number of other occasions, such as for example about the Director-General of Home Affairs. Now if you committed the principle of an opposition Chairperson that carries certain responsibilities as well for a majority party, quite frankly speaking, and for the members of the majority party as it does for us, but more particularly for the members of the majority party. It takes a particular commitment and it will give certain tensions between the opposition Chairperson and that majority party when issues arise which the majority party feels particularly protective about. This is not abnormal. It happens in any democracy. It is in the nature of politics and political parties to act that way. The problem with this discussion is that it divorces the letter from the context out of which it arose. I, for one, while I would take umbrage in normal circumstances when somebody says to me this is non-negotiable, I am not divorcing this letter from the context out of which it arose. Therefore I am not outraged about the non-negotiable nature of the issues that are being put on the table, because I can understand coming from where this Chairperson comes from, the experience of last year. And putting it frankly, the way in which process was changed by the majority party, the way in which certain Chairpersons rulings were challenged by the majority party, it makes it incredibly difficult. Now I am not saying you are not entitled to your views. I am saying accept those tensions, accept the way in which they arose in the Arms Deal, accept them like if your own Chief Whip was on record as saying that the changes in the Committee on your side was there to exert political control and to tie you in with your leadership. This is not public record. Accept that as the context style out of which this arose and do not divorce the context and you will understand why the individual in the chair cast and crafted this in non-negotiable terms.

[Chairperson] What I meant by non-negotiable, there is a difference sort of context there. These issues are not non-negotiables for the Committee. I am not proposing that to the Committee. Please do not repeat it. We are here to discuss and to get the Committee's view. What I feel is right or wrong in my heart is what I feel. I am not imposing it on the Committee. There are no limitations by use of that word.

[Ms R Taljaard] I have a point of clarification, because in your own statement you indicated that these were key to your as an individual. Now the experience of last year revolves around you as an individual and the way that this inter-relationship between you as an individual and the governing party transpires, and my statements about context are in that context.

[Mr B Kannemeyer] Just in terms of what you just said now. It is important for me as an individual, because it is definitely going to have an impact on my further participation in this meeting. When you say that it is non-negotiable for you, in the same way that Ms Taljaard say we cannot remove the context of the letter, we cannot remove you as an individual from the fact that you are the current Chair. And if the current Chairperson of the Committee is saying for me this is non-negotiable, can the Chair also say to us upfront if you do not accept this, this will be my course of action. I think that is important. So that as you say Ms Taljaard that no one creates the impression that this is just about the work method of SCOPA. I think the Chair has said it himself. There are still papers that are developed that underpins and informs this. And therefore when we put cards on the table put all of it on the table. Chairperson I will support you. Let us dispose of this matter by saying this is the Chairperson's views. The majority party must say whether they accept of agree, because the Chair is saying, and that is what I want to understand, when you say let us discuss and engage, I want to know what is the freedom that I have to speak my mind based on my experience? Is there openness from the Chair side to consider how I experience the work in the Committee? What the Minister of Home Affairs said, it really let up something in my to say that sometimes we do make the mistake of when we assess a situation we forget that we are part of that process. And to what extend when the assessment was done was there a sense that maybe as Chair I was at fault here. Yes, let us accept indeed, I have also challenged the Chairperson's ruling on a number of things. I have contributed to chairing the way the Chairperson wanted the meeting to go by making interventions. Well forgive me, I thought it was my right to do that. The question that comes, bearing that in mind, as a member of this Committee as part of the collective, and collective in the context of this Committee Mr Bruce, not that you must be bound agreeing with what Mr Nair have said earlier, in that context Chairperson I really do not think that this is constructive and/or productive for the Committee. I think it is unfortunate, and that is why I have asked in my earlier input that you remove the non-negotiability of this, that we view it as the Chairperson's initiative, which it was and we applauded that initiative. It was unfortunately tainted. The letter did not say it is non-negotiable. The letter said it is required, but on the question from the Chairperson of our study group it was actually put in so many words that it is non-negotiable. I will not mention the word "non-negotiable', but I think you owe to explain particularly to the majority party in this Committee, but the entire Committee members what is the minimum that as Chairperson you would want to have and what is it that you intend doing if you do not get it? You owe that to us so that we understand the context of this meeting. I do not think we can sit here in fooling ourselves if you have made up your mind in one way or the other. This is just a test to see where x, y or z will happen. I think we are then playing with ourselves and with this democracy particularly if particular positions had been taken already. We do not want to speculate. I think you are the only one who can help us in this regard. But from my side, and I am quite prepared to face my party's discipline on this, if you say this is non-negotiable and expect me still to sit here and listen while we discuss this knowing that as Chairperson you say you have made up your mind on this, I will be the one wasting my time.

[Chairperson] I thought I had explained it, but let me try and make it a bit more clearly here. Let me withdraw the words "non-negotiable". They are withdrawn unconditionally. Let me also take your lead in saying these are the Chairperson's views. It is the Chairperson's views which he feels very strongly about and he feels very strongly about them because by his account, right or wrong, he feels he is unnecessary in the interest of SCOPA. What the Chairperson does or does not do ………………, is neither here or there. I have not made a decision. But I think it is obvious that if I found that my views are considered not to be acceptable I will have to think this through. Will I be able to chair a committee where I belief it is still fundamentally flawed and we are going to have problems down the road? Maybe you need to differ with the Chairperson? I have not made up my mind on that. It is an important meeting to me to get your views, but it will be the Committee that makes the decisions whether I like it or not. There are many decisions made in many committees which we all in our careers have to accept. So Mr Kannemeyer I really hope I have sorted it out. The word "non-negotiable" is out of the room.

[Mr P Gerber] Chair you say that we should not get personal. Now I have sat in this Committee for more than two years and I have not applied to be in this Committee. The things you are saying in your letter, which I do not even have here, I think so little of it, I do not want to have it here. If I want to read something I will borrow it here. You make personal allegations on me as a person, never mind collective, because I am a member of this Committee and the ANC. Now whenever one get to a personal stage you say no, let us stick to the contents of the letter. I do not want to pick a fight with you. But you have many times in many Afrikaans papers, Rapport, Burger, Beeld, you have made allegations about SCOPA and the members of SCOPA, and also mentioning the ANC component of it, saying that the Committee will never be the same since Mr Feinstein has left and everything has changed. Now when you are saying those things you are saying it about me because I am a member of the ANC in this Committee. I live in a village called Wellington which is conservative and there is a lot of people there who knows I am in Parliament and that I am a member of the ANC. They know that I have a tough battle in a boere gemeenskap being a member of the ANC. Now when you say those things Chair, you are insulting me. Because when I sit in the train in the evening or in the morning like I did today, then the guys know I am from Parliament. They speak to me. They want to know what is this about that this person is saying. I have a wife and small children. I do not think you should be saying these things. It is not fair. I think all of us in this room are like that. I do not think this is the way you should do it. You cannot make statements. Now in that letter of you, you say depersonalize meaning such and such. I checked the Oxford dictionary. Depersonalize does not mean that. You say depolitizise meaning such and such. It does not mean that. We are sitting here as members of political parties, otherwise we would not be sitting here. The fact that there are more members from certain parties than other members, DA or NNP, is exactly because this Committee is politicized. The issue comes in about the voting. Now if we vote once in five years you think now the Committee is politicized. I can carry on like this and maybe I do not know how to express myself properly in English. I have come here to work. I was a Chairperson of this Committee when I was a member of the National Party in the Legislature and we use to work. We did not have these intellectual debates about talks. I have got three stacks of reports in my office. It just gets bigger, because every time I come here we have these talks. We went overseas and you were not there. Mr Nair was not either. And I understand and respect that it might be difficult for you and uncle Billy to travel, but we came back here and it was a tough trip. It is not nice being overseas lately to be away from your family. You have not even said thank you for going out there and doing SCOPA's work. Everywhere where we met the delegations of the other Parliaments, the one Chairperson in London was a previous minister for …………., an opposition party as well. There was no letter from you. Mr Smith had to think up a story why you are not here and apologised. If we want to go forward with this Committee, whether we vote or not, we have to operate like a team. Some of us do not have the talent to be team players, but at least we must try. It is time that we in this Committee finish these talks that we have today and get on with the job, because why we wasted many meetings talking like this for hours and hours where you loose half the people's attention anyway. There are stacks of problems in departments and parastatels. You know I have mentioned many things about Transnet, they do not even report back to me. All I am saying to you is that we must finish with this thing. Let us say what we want to say and let us get on with the job. That is why the people out there put us here.

[Mr V Smith] I think Mr Gerber took us forward. What I am going to say now is not what Mr Gerber is saying. It is what the ANC is saying from the highest level. I am agreeing with Mr Gerber. I do not think that the ANC is going to discuss this type of matter again in the future. So we are putting our card on the table. You must make up your mind what you want to do. The opposition must make up their mind what they want to do. We have made up our mind what we want to do. In as far as depolitisising the Committee is concerned - we really do not understand what you mean by depolitisising this Committee. The reason why the ANC argues for a study group on a Monday, when we joined this Committee SCOPA used to sit on Monday. When we joined this Committee the previous leadership of this Committee from the ANC agreed to meeting on a Monday. We joined this Committee and we insisted that on a Monday we are going to have a study group day. A study group means that the ANC sits in its corner and it discusses strategy from an ANC perspective. That strategy is informed by the strategy of the ANC nationally, because we are an unitary organisation. I do not make decisions here that are not in line with ANC decisions at Lethuli House. So we do not understand depolitisising. We joined SCOPA first as members of Parliament and we joined Parliament as members of the ANC. So on your first point - that the Committee is depolitizised - meaning that we put our responsibility to Parliament before our responsibility to political parties. That is what you are saying there. We are saying to you on that point that we disagree with you. That the ANC's policies will always be paramount as a member of the ANC and I would assume that that applies to every political party. You cannot come here and talk as if we are not members of the ANC. So on that point we disagree with you. We do not necessarily agree that this Committee is politicized, but we certainly are not going to be doing what you are suggesting we do here, that we put our responsibility of Parliament before the ANC as if we do not do it in all other business. On that matter we do not understand what you mean. We are going to continue to operate in the fashion that we operate. In other words the ANC will take a decision that the ANC believes is what our principles are. So whether you want to call it politicized or depoliticized, we are going to continue operating in the fashion that we have operated up to now. We have study groups. We will confer as ANC members and we will come here and say this is what we think is good for the country, Parliament and SCOPA. That is our position. Mr Gerber is saying let us forget the romantic side of it. Let us discuss proper matters. I am putting the position on the first bullet point. Members can contribute from which ever side they are taking it. I requested earlier on that we go from bullet point to bullet point so that you are able to know what we are thinking. I also want to know what you are thinking when you do that so that I can defend our action or defend your action or criticize your action later on and I am hoping that we are doing it in that fashion. That people briefly say what is their view on this bullet point and let us take a decision on that. But we are not going to depolitizise it because we do not believe it is politicized. But we do believe as members of the ANC that we will take the quo from the ANC because it is an unitary structure in this country.

[Chairperson] Thank you for engaging one of these issues. I think already when we engage these issues and whatever issues members have, so that we do come up with us having found out what the way forward for the Committee is. So this is one issue that we now dealt with head on.

[Mr D Gumede] I believe we are talking here because we want to be more effective and efficient. And having that in mind I think also we are members of a democratic Parliament. That means as a result in case of a deadlock there are things you have got to do. The first being persuasion in leadership. Leadership with persuasiveness. If there are problems you engage. If you see us as different parties then you talk to leaders who no matter what problems we are having first before we say things in the press or we get these notes, because otherwise it creates a problem. Coming back to the question of the Arms Deal, the Chairperson himself initiated by saying that in the Arms Deal we are going to deal with it as political parties. I did not know what it meant, but that was your proposal as Chairperson. I have to talk as ANC and the other people had to talk as parties. Whether that was political or not is not for me to decide, but let us have that in mind. And let us not loose sight of the fact that the Arms Deal as it presented itself as an issue, it presented an opportunity to pacifists to try and stop the government from getting weapons. It presents an opportunity for those who lost the bid to reopen the bid. It presented an opportunity for other parties to increase their constituency. There are so many opportunities that were created and a lot of people loose those opportunities. We are not oblivious to that type of fact. I think fairly all over the world those opportunities are used by different political parties. Now to say that it was politicized, there is nothing unusual about Parliament being political. What is much more of a problem to me is that we continue ignoring the fact that there is a Business Plan that we agreed which should have been our spring board for discussing our plans for this year no matter what the plan is it should have been our spring board. I am not saying that you should not have presented this position. Perhaps if it was based on saying that these are the weaknesses on the Business Plan we adopted and seeing these weaknesses this is my position. It would not have been a problem, but if it comes as if now we are ignoring the input that we made to the Business Plan then it tends to present a problem. And then going back to what was said by Ms Taljaard on the question of redirecting the Chair - I think that is just a question of language. What happens is everybody puts up a hand and say a point of order. It is an acceptable procedure and then it depends on the Chairperson how he respond to it. And then if they give you an opportunity to redirect why not. If they do not give you an opportunity and then it is procedural it is not a problem. So those types of things in meetings happen and then we have got to be vigilant and perhaps we have got to revisit meeting procedure and make sure that we have the same understanding on the different aspects of holding meetings. And lastly, I think as much as possible, whether it is a majority or a minority, good leadership demands that as much as possible all of us should hold almost every position, because we are allowed to give a contribution and we are persuading. I think the question of persuasion is critical in democratic leadership, especially if we are chairpersons coming from minority parties. And by persuasion I am not saying that you would stand in front of all of us, but we definitely have firm leadership from different parties. If you confer perhaps we could all end up holding different positions that the Chairperson would like to have. And now if such a decision is predated by press reports we have been seeing that does not assist the situation for us all. Let us try and discuss these matters in a spirit of making our Committee more effective and efficient.

[Mr N Bruce] I think we are getting down to the nub of what we have come to discuss today. Looking at how committees like this work abroad and reflecting on this Committee, I do not think it is reasonable or anybody is actually asked when referring to depoliticization and what it means. It is to expect any parliamentarian or any member of any party to leave his or her political principles behind and come here as a sort of anodyne object. No. Nobody has ever asked anybody to do that and none of the committees that we saw abroad ever did that sort of thing. The function of this Committee is not to propagate policy and political principle. It is to actually to investigate whether money has been spent efficiently or not. That is what we have to do. I do not see in examining that the question of abandoning one's political principles need come into it. Either money is spent well or badly. Now if we are going to work to a consensus and I would like to know from the ANC whether they wish to work towards a consensus, because it seems to me that that is the best and most efficient way to do it. It has been proven by practice abroad. If they wish to do it, it is within their gift. It is not within the gift of the opposition parties. The opposition parties can sit here and say we agree or disagree. It is very easy for a Member of Parliament to sit here and agree. The real test comes from a majority party. If they wish to listen to the opposition parties, if they wish to believe in democracy and Parliament it is within their gift. We, I am sure on this side, would like to move towards consensus. And we will put political principles behind us and concentrate on economic efficiencies. That is what we are supposed to do. I am not sure, and I would like to hear, whether the ANC has a commitment towards that end.

[Mr V Smith] I think this is what is causing the problem. You see Mr Bruce speaks as if financial management is divorced from ANC principles. It is not. That is why I am saying to you and to this Committee that to assume that the ANC's principles will detract from good financial management is what we must correct in this Committee. We are married to good financial management as the ANC. We are committed to fighting corruption as the ANC. We are committed to all these things that SCOPA wants to do as the ANC. Our point is that you do not have to continuously say depolitizise the Committee so that it can work correctly. We are saying that as the ANC those are part of our principles. After all we are the majority party and we shape these things here. We are saying it is part of our principles. We are saying that it is wrong to try and divorce party politics from good financial management because they can co-exist and in the ANC's case they indeed co-exist. It is for that reason that we are saying it is a non-issue to say depolitizise SCOPA. For the ANC it is a non-issue because we believe fundamentally in our party politics that this is what must be done. We are saying it becomes a non-issue to make politics of the ANC a stumbling block in this case as it is with any other party. I do not think your party has a different view in terms of financial management and its party politics. So to come here and say that as long as you come with your DA cap SCOPA becomes dysfunctional. It is a misnomer. It is destroying the Committee. I want to be able to say to you that you come here as the DA, you ……….. DA policies and SCOPA will still continue to work. But this type of comment is what is bedeviling the Committee.

[Chairperson] We need to move on. I have the feeling that we are flirting with our agenda and with certain issues, but we are not really tackling them. I think Mr Smith tackled one specific issue and that is where we started to move. Perhaps I need to take it back. Mr Gumede is right. We have a Business Plan which we have agreed to, which we can change if we want to. We also have a pile of work on our desks. I take it that we are all sincere that we want to move forward now. Our contention is that there were some problems that if we do not fix it could undermine that Business Plan. Now the Committee is free to disagree with me to say that if we do not believe there are problems let us go. If that is the Committee's decision then we just go and hope for the best. That is my view. But if they agree that there are problems, let us agree what those problems are so we can sort them out. Are they the problems that I am suggesting or not? Or are they the problems that you might know about? Whatever they are, let us agree if there are problems and let us deal with them. I just want to get that focus. It will be such a pity if we get to 12 o'clock and we still do not feel confident that we are moving forward on a sure foot.

[Ms R Taljaard] there is something that I would like to clarify and then I would like to make a process proposal to dove tail a proposal made earlier by Mr Smith that he would go through the list, bullet point by bullet point, and give a particular view because we have indicated, and you have indicated these are your views when you withdrew the "non-negotiable" words. Mr Smith indicated that he would indicate what are the particular views bullet by bullet. So I would suggest that process. I would like clarification in relation to the first bullet because it is instructive as to whether or not we are on the same song sheet when we go forward into the Business Plan or not. It is quite pivotal. On this issue about whether the Committee is politizised or not, do I understand correctly that an umbilical cord between the Lethuli House leadership and the ANC members of Parliament is not seen as a difficulty and is seen as an enhancing grant to this Committee and is, in fact, seen as a further leverage for ANC policy within this Committee. Just clarify that. It is quite pivotal for this discussion.

[Chairperson] In a vague way that might refer to the depolitization of the Committee or not. Ms Taljaard I think it is a valid question.

[Ms R Taljaard] I am sorry. I beg to differ because it arose out of the statement made by the leader of the ANC study group in this Committee.

[Mr N Masithela] I think what we want to deal with as you say is that we must do it point by point and maybe people should deal with those points as and when they feel to deal with the points. And if this question comes we should not respond it because it has no bearing to deal with the Committee procedures in this meeting. I think we should not deal with those matters. People should make their inputs as and when we respond to issues, we then deal with those matters as we debate issues. I think that will take the meeting forward.

[Chairperson] I think Ms Taljaard's question is tied up to Mr Smith's statement. I thought Mr Smith's statement was fairly clear on how the ANC approaches it. Ms Taljaard is wanting a brief answer and I am going to respect that. So if somebody could just give her a very brief response to that.

[Mr S Ndou] I came into this meeting late. I apologise for that. Since I have been in this room I have been listening to you talking and I could not really grapple with what you were talking about the letter which was written by you and so on. You were talking and talking. I have been asking myself the question as to whether we are serious on our work, because each one of you when he try to put a point you sound like the first year college students and we are here to work. We are not here to score points. We came here to do our work. You are asking yourself questions to whether we are to be depolitizised or not. We have been with this Committee since 1994. You know what bedeviled this Committee, it is when the so-called fire brand came into the Committee from the opposition is where things went wrong. You seem to be very forgetfull.

[Chairperson] I do not think we are going to go forward if we start blaming individuals. It is going to take us backwards.

[Mr S Ndou] No, I thin I have to talk what I think. There is a proverb in Venda which says "……………………………" which means to "says something which is incorrect you are opening for a correct thing to take place". So in Venda every man and women is allowed to talk his mind and we correct that and say no, this was not correct. I was just trying to also share my view on what happened so that it becomes part of what you are discussing in this session. My suggestion is that we are here to do some work. Let us look at something that will carry us forward to do this work, but we will remain political beings. That one we cannot divorce ourself from. I remember I was detained and tortured on a number of occasions. I never divorced the ANC because of those tortures and imprisonment and that you do not come into this small committee and be told to divorce myself from that. This is what I can explain and you cannot divorce yourself from what you are. Those cannot divorce themselves from what they are, except if they want to join the ANC it is when they will be divorcing the other principle. The point is that you are here to lead this Committee to do its work. Not to discuss this gossips. How long has we been gossiping, since last year and we continue with this gossiping. I am not interested in this. I want to see work. If you say here is work. This Report is incorrect because here the money was misused then we will do the work, but as political beings.

[Mr V Smith] Last week when Ms Taljaard was sitting in that same seat that she sat in, she says she had discussed with Mr D Gibson. That is a political leader in Parliament. On this matter here she has discussed it with Mr Gibson. When I came in here I said to you that this is the ANC's position because I discussed it with the Chief Whip of the ANC who is my political leader here. Where she gets her instructions from is not SCOPA's business. I have a political leader in Parliament and the instruction and the consensus that we reach in that meeting with that political leader is that on this matter we will continue to do business as we are doing business. I hope that answers Ms Taljaard's question.

[Chairperson] We are not going down the right road here. Is it a point of order? Too many people are giving long speeches but at the end they say let us get on with the work. By giving their long speeches they are holding us back. We have a way forward. I think some of us are clear on it and some missed it. Ms Taljaard it is clear that you and Mr Smith have missed each other and he has not quite replied to your question. Let us leave it at that.

[Ms R Taljaard] There is a recording and I do not want a misrepresentation to be on the recording. I do insist on a point of order.

[Chairperson] Mr smith gave you a reply. If it is the wrong reply and it missed your point, it missed it. People will read it. It is not something that you are going to sort out.

[Mr P Gerber] The point of order is whatever she is referring to is anyway recorded. So if she is misrepresented it cannot be because then it is on the tape anyway.

[Dr G Koornhof] I have full sympathy and agreement with Mr Smith to start with point one on your letter. I have listened to this discussion. I think we are not going to solve the problem this way, because before we can start discussing each of the bullet points there is something very serious that we need to address amongst ourselves. It is trust and leadership. Whoever sits in that chair on leadership, we must discuss what we expect from that person in the chair. Secondly, if we do not have trust amongst each other in this Committee, we can discuss these points in five minutes and we will finish it. We will probably vote on it. So to get the work done I think we need to get a commitment amongst ourself, and we must say we trust each other as individual members in this Committee. If we do not do it we are not going to make any progress. I feel apparently we are not on the same wavelength in this Committee. Not one political party in this committee is blameless. All of us make mistakes in this Committee. I brought things to this Committee that I knew was political jargon and it was a mistake. so unless we address that and re-establish trust, proper leadership from each member, but also especially from the Chair and what we expect from that, I doubt whether we are going to make any progress to discuss point by point. Somebody said earlier it will be a mechanical discussion. We will take a view on it and that will be it. Will it take the Committee forward? I doubt it. So really we must either take a very dramatic action in the Committee to renew it completely or we need to take a decision how do we start with your question getting on with the work and what Mr Ndou said? He wants to get on with the work. I want to and everybody wants to get on with the work. I maybe not, but we are so far apart in our minds, in the trust and we missed opportunities. The oversees trip that Mr Gerber mentioned was one opportunity that we completely missed. We missed that all, but it is gone. We cannot go back and discuss it now. So we can go point by point. This is what I came here this morning for to discuss it point by point and argue about it in an open fashion and try to convince each other. But with 2 hours that we have discussed now, I do not think it is possible. Tell me or not, then we can go mechanically through it and we can discuss it and put our views. The point that I am making is before we discuss this we must establish trust amongst each other and the key here is the majority party. The ANC is the majority not in the contents and the principles of clean government and corruption and that. That is not what I am talking about. I am talking about numbers. The ANC has got the majority of numbers in this Committee and you can determine how are we re-establishing that trust.

[Mr A Blaas] We got a document in front of us and the comments are based on this document. Yes and I think the bullets express or addresses the issues that are of concern in making this SCOPA a more functional committee. My comments would be basically with reference to bullet one. That if the focus is correct on being and oversight committee and we focus on the wrongs and try to make financial management better in Parliament or for South Africa then the political polarization becomes a non-issue, because correctness is absent. Yes, there is an interlink between political parties and there is guidance, but financial management is either correct or wrong. And if that focus is correct then there will not be a political issue except if you bring a policy issue in where there will be differences. And I think the responsibility of guiding that process and keeping that order lies within the hands of the Chairperson. Reference to the second bullet - personalization is a relevant issue. It all depends on how thick your political skin is and whether you are going to see it as a de-personalized issue or not. In politics there are personalized issues. We can try to keep it out of SCOPA but it will creep in. There will be differences, there will be personalized issues. I do not think that is a major issue, except if somebody perceives it as being a major issue or an individual has had that reaction. With reference to the committee de-construction and having 3 plenaries and do away with the sub groups, it is going to be very difficult for the smaller parties to maintain a three-day presentation in SCOPA, because of the fact that they have divided responsibilities in other committees as well. I suggest that we stick to the two-day plenary, that we stick to the sub group operations, but that we do an evaluation after each plenary to evaluate our efficiency of that meeting against the objectives that we set ourselves for that meeting, against time utilization for that meeting and proper organization of that meeting. And then see where our meeting deficiencies are and try to conclude from those. With reference to bullet 4 - I got no comments. I think that should be a fundamental decision to be made that we stick to our plan if it is been approved. To give reference to bullet number 5, again, if there are deficiencies in experience or capability then the training should be done where and when we can get it. With reference to bullet no 6, the chairperson and the request for the necessary authority and respect, yes I can only agree with that. But I think there is one constraint that we do have here, it is that the Chairperson is a one member representation of the IPF on this Committee. In some cases he must put on a IFP hat, in some cases he must put on a SCOPA chairperson hat. That can lead to conflict. It inhibits debate either from the chairperson side when he is in the chair or it can use to abusement of the chair to participate in debates. Maybe if we do have a situation like that we must request that there is a change in the Rules, that there should be a second IFP representative, so that the Chair can be make loose from his political hat to ensure that he governs and order the meeting as a chairperson of a meeting where he got support from his political parties in that meeting can really order the meeting, and have proper participation in the debate without doing it from the chair.

[Chairperson] I think Mr Blaas is demonstrating what we should all be doing. It is tackling the issues whether we agree with them or not.

[Mr N Masithela] It does seem that Mr Smith, Mr Blaas and Mr Bruce are correct that it is not going to be easy for us to take our political hats out of the Committee. But in terms of discussing the financial and fiscal oversight it is possible for us to deal with financial matters and not deal with the policy. That would help this Committee. Not to be diverted to discuss policy matters. If we do not discuss policy matters there is no way that we can differ. I think we should agree with that because that would help us a great deal. I want to refrain from discussing what the Chief Whip of the DP said when they removed ………………….. I do not want to deal with that, because he made a political statement. And also last week Ms Taljaard made a political statement. It is not going to help us to deal with those matters in this meeting. We should just focus on this bullet points. That would help us a great deal to move forward.

[Ms N Hlangwana] It was unfortunate that I was last on the list, because I wanted to respond to some of the issues that have been raised earlier on. The issue that I am going to deal with that I think is very important is the issue of trust, which I think we might not be sincerely looking at it or when we discuss we just raise it and we do not go deep into that issue. I think it is one of the issues that really disorganized this Committee and I would not agree basically that it lays only with the majority party, because to a certain extent where it comes from is when the Chairperson started to speaking to the media when we all in this Committee did not know whether he was speaking on his personal basis or he is speaking as IFP or as the Chairperson of this Committee. In my own opinion that is where it started. Secondly, the issue that is being raised of de-politicizing the Committee - when somebody said, and it is correct, that the opposition, and my own opinion is that they started with this thing of politicizing the Committee, because when it comes to looking at a Report and they believe that they will be able to score a point politically in that issue, then they politicized it and obviously the majority party will have to respond to that. Dr Koornhof has spoken about it so say that in his party they have brought political issues into this Committee. It is a fact and we must just accept it. If we do accept it we must agree that we move away from it. I think the majority party will not respond politically if issues in this Committee, as we have done them before, are not politicized. I still remember when Mr K Andrew was the chairperson we used to agree on everything. We never voted on anything, because I do not know if it was the DA or it was not the DA at the time, it was the DP, they never took things politically in any way. And the issue of listening to each other, which was brought up by Mr Kannemeyer, it is a very serious issue. It is not that the majority party does not listen too, it goes both sides. If you look at it very well we both do not listen to each other, all of us in fact, because if we do we would understand where do you come from, how do you see things, what do you think is the better way to deal with those issues. We come from different backgrounds and we deal with issues from that experiences. If I know for a fact that I was looked down at before, if I know for a fact that I have fought for this freedom, obviously I am going to look at issues in a different manner than the person who had it nice all the time. So we come from those backgrounds that we cannot run away from. So we need to agree that we must trust each other and we must not as the majority party go on to the media and say things that are going to be contradicting the decisions that we have taken by all of the political parties involved here. Issues that go to the media that have been discussed in this Committee should have been agreed upon and a correct version of that agreement should be taken to the media.

[Mr D Gumede] I think speaking after Ms Hlangwana the question of listening has been emphasis and I have learn it and I hope I will be able to practice it all the time. The IFP has got to closely examine the proposal made by Mr Blaas of having a member here if the chairperson is from the IFP rather than playing both roles. I think you have got to seriously consider that. I wanted to respond to the different points that are here. I do not agree with point one, but I am saying there is a problem here. The problem is sometimes we find there is a financial problem we have to react to. We know there is a person who is an Accounting Officer. We do not want that person to account and then we want a political somebody to account who we know should account after every 5 years. An Accounting Officer for Financial Management is known. There is a disagreement in as far as that is concerned. We have got to see how we overcome that. Call the President, call the Minister, do this to the Minister, that type of thing. It has got a political mileage yes, but how do we make it assist Financial Manager? That would be how I would react to the first point. And then in that sense perhaps it could assist in de-politicizing our positions. The second bullet - we have got to look at market procedure and remind ourselves, discuss it and see what does the Chair do when somebody attacks somebody personally in a meeting. And agree or just discuss it so that we can put people to order. If I attack Ms Taljaard or she attacks me personally everybody understands that that should not be done. Then there should be a point of order if the Chairperson has not protected me, that type of thing. That one is meeting procedure, which we need to remind ourselves of all the time, because sometimes a certain culture creeps in and then you do not recognized it and then as a result you do not quickly identify what is out of line and which should be acted upon. And if I act on it you think I am attacking you. Then on the question of de-construction of the Committee - I think our problem there was time. How do we increase time? Do we increase it by not having weekends or by taking constituency time? What do we do? Do we have groups? The group option to me still appeals. I would go for 7 days if there is an absolute need, even Saturdays, Sundays or holidays. Also there is a constituency to run. If you do not go to your constituency you would not be elected next time as well, because people would not be knowing you. So if we spend every weekend here, all the time, I disagree with that expect if there is something pressing, unavoidable and urgent. Things like the Arms Deal the way it cropped up and so forth. I think the Chairperson wanted to say there should be openness and exposure to the press of sub committees or whatever. I do not know how we make that transparent and open. The question to allowing the Chairperson of SCOPA to have no less authority and initiative than that of other chairpersons - I do not disagree with that. He should, but now we have got to unpack what we say here, what do we mean, and then after unpacking that, perhaps we are going to discuss it intelligently. But unless we are unpack it we are going to approach it from our political backgrounds and that is going to cause problems.

[Chairperson] That was very helpful Mr Gumede. We are in a position where we basically dealt with the first point. The ANC are quite clear on their position and other parties seems to be in disagreement. We have taken that as far as we can go. We can reflect on that and we have to agree that if the ANC do not believe that we are unduly politicized then we are saying there are not really a problem, so we can put that aside and say there is nothing to deal with. So we move onto the next one. And as Mr Gumede has done on the de-politicized one, do we agree there is a problem? I think we are saying there are, we are talking about trust. It is also not simply attacking somebody. It is often very shuttle and I think we do it to each other without wanting to get personal. A member in this Committee last week said something which question my integrity and motives in a very fundamental way. It just happens these days. We have to be far more careful and sensitive. I do get the feeling and am I correct that we agree that we should be bit more sensitive and there should be a bit more respect between us? I am trying to lead this line.

[Mr V Smith] We all agree on what you have said on the second point, but there is no need into debating it. Yes, if we have personalized matters we must stop it and that you should be also awake to that and to pull us to order when we go out of order. On that one we do not have a problem. I am going to run through it in the same way as Mr Blaas did. Mr Gumede has touched on most of the things. In terms of the 3^rd one - as the ANC we think that practice of 3 clusters should be maintained. We think so because when this idea was brought up it was to line it up with Cabinet and it made lots of sense for us to do that. Therefore we are saying that it must be retained. If people are saying that they are marginalized or that the ANC has hijacked it or whatever the other reasons are, lets say that and deal with those matters. How do we deal with that? I can indicate that the ANC in terms with that one, our own view is that the status quo is retained. In terms of the 3^rd point - we as the ANC are open to meeting 7 days a week, Christmas day, and in recess, but it is not something that should be legislative so to say. When the need arises we sit and we discuss whether there is a need for that meeting and then we sit and meet. But we do not think that we should be sitting here and say yes 3 days for meetings. Practical when we looked at it Mondays we are not going to sacrifice our study groups. We will not as the ANC sacrifice our study groups on Mondays, so Mondays are out. Tuesday and Wednesday we meet, Thursday is caucus. We cannot sacrifice caucus on Thursday, and I am talking about morning sessions. If you are going to talk about the afternoon sessions there is sittings. We can look at it. I am just talking about the practical side. Friday there is a likelihood that there will be sittings in the morning. We have discussed this matter. Many of us from the North have indicated that it makes our life difficult to sit and work on a Friday whilst we accept that Friday is a working day of Parliament, but those of us from the North, those of us that wants to go to constituencies see it as a bit of a problem. But we will never put that in front of sitting and doing SCOPA work. That is why we are saying that if we feel that we must sit this week Friday in our planning, as we done with everything else, sit and say there is a need to meet this Friday. Let us debate the matter and let us take it from there. So our own position is that we think 2 days suffice and 3, 4 days a week recess is something that must be discuss and agreed to on merit. I do not think there is a problem with the first bullet point of our training. We seem to have an understanding and we have people that represent us on APAC and all other sorts of training bodies. So I do not know. Everybody can discuss that one or disagree with you on that one. On the one that the Chairperson of SCOPA be allowed no less authority - we agree with that one. It is very clear that there is rules in this Parliament and the Rules says that the Chairperson of a committee is subject to the provision of these Rules and the direction of the committee. So I do not understand of a need to have any more or less authority. If you agree to the Rules that say that the chairperson is subject to other provisions in the Rules and is subject to the direction of the committee there will not be a problem. We agree with that. We are saying that that must be something that must be married to the Rules, so we have no problem with that. This other point that says and that members respect the fundamental principles which underpin the decision of an opposition Chair - I do not know what it is you are saying here. We have no problem and we have indicated it, but we cannot be held ransom to that particular position. Because if at some stage it must be reviewed, it will be reviewed, but as things stands now the ANC will certainly respect you as a Chairperson according to the Rules of Parliament. This other matter about principle of opposition - it is something that is totally different. The Rules of Parliament is what is relevant. That is what we will abide by and you are entitled to it and we will support that point. So very much in line of what Mr Blaas had said, we agree with him on most issues. I do not know that there is anywhere that we do disagree with Mr Blaas, maybe the first bullet point of de-politicized, but we have discussed that. And all the other points, unfortunately we are not in the favor of de-construction. We are not in favor of a hard and fast three-day working, but we will certainly work on Christmas day if the need arises. And on the other two we agree with, that there is training and that the Chairperson be allow to chair the meeting subject to the Rules. That is in a nutshell where we come from. In terms of trust - I think that Dr Koornhof is correct. But I do not think that, and Mr Bruce indicated this earlier this morning also, that it is within the ambit of the majority party. As if it is this, and this is the difficulty that we have as the ANC. I want to be very open. There is a consistent, even if it is a perception and not a reality, that things will work if those people agree on that side. That it is within the ambit of the majority party. I do not think trust comes from the majority party. Trust comes from everybody. If I was in your position as opposition chairperson fundamental things that I would look at are where are the power brokers in terms of selling my idea? It happens whether you are an ANC chairperson, it happens when you are an opposition chairperson, and from my side also try and win those people over, not the people, but to get my ideas across to them. So I do not know if there is a mechanical way for trust, but you have a role to play as a Chairperson in unifying this Committee. You have properly a bigger role then any of us have to play in unifying this Committee. We also have a role to play in assisting you and the opposition or whoever the case is. But it is wrong to continuously say they are the people, it is within their ambit to make consensus, and it is within their ambit for trust. That was the point I was wanted to make on trust. I agree that there must be trust and that you have additional role to play as the chairperson, and your role of unifying, and Dr Koornhof is correct that we lost an opportunity when we went overseas. For you to be able to be there to unify the Committee, and I hear what people are saying about the difficulty that you and Mr Nair have, but I do not buy that story. I do not buy that story because coinciding with our overseas trip you were overseas. So it is not about the difficulty of you traveling overseas. That is why I am agreeing with Dr Koornhof that it was a lost opportunity, because you went to address the World Bank. We had a portfolio committee engagement that we all agreed upon as portfolio committees. Now the question I am asking, I am not saying you must answer it, I am not pointing a finger, but when we look at trust, when we look at building team unity, the question that I am asking is if you were so serious about unifying this Committee, was that not the opportunity to do it rather then go to the World Bank? In November when we were suppose to leave you had a commitment that made it difficult for you to accompany us. We accepted it that you had prior arrangements. In January you had another commitment not to go with us. So whilst they may be very legitimate these are the things that some of us sit and say, how committed is the Chairperson to unifying this Committee? How committed is the Chairperson if the World Bank's address is bigger or a greater responsibility then the responsibility of SCOPA? I am not making a value judgment. I am saying these are the questions that arise in all our minds. I want to say to you, because I led that delegation, and I am glad Dr Koornhof brought it up, because we would be lying to you if we said that this matter was not raised overseas. We would be dishonest if we did not say that. We raised it, all the political parties identified and agreed that this was a great opportunity of not only doing SCOPA work, but of trying to bring the committee together and it would have been a big bonus if you were there to lead us in that matter, because we started a process of bonding. So I am raising it in the context of any Report or a sense that we picked up overseas. So therefore on trust - I agree with Dr Koornhof. I do not think it is event. It is a process and I am identifying the role that we must play in the process, and I identifying the other role that people that must play in the process, and that we cannot put the ball to Mr Woods or the majority party or whoever. We must work on it. I was saying from my own point of view, if I was in your shoes I would probably look at, and somebody raised it, that you talk to the leaders of all the political parties and hope that they sell your idea, our idea to the rest of the people. It is something that are going to be on a longer term event then us just thinking that we are going to walk out of here and we automatically trust one another. It is process that we all have to work on.

[Ms R Taljaard] We have listened to the input that has been made by other parties and by other individuals. One of the most distressing things arises in relation to bullet one, because we do have a very strong view that there has been a great degree of politicization and we are therefore support this bullet very strongly. We will have to have a discussion about this at some stage otherwise a lot of the work we will do will be build on shifting sand quite frankly. Secondly in relation to the second bullet, and we are speaking frankly, last year was marked by a number of incidents particularly disturbing and in fact belittling personalization in this Committee, which is both unbecoming of Members of Parliament but also unbecoming of the individuals in this room. I will get this off my chest, because I will do it, if the arena demands it. In this instance I particularly was personalized a number of instances last year. It is unbecoming of us to conduct that type of behavior. I tried to the best of my ability to not respond in kind. I truly did try and if there were instances where I did respond in kind I would like to apologize for that. But I would like to urge those who were guilty of such perpetrations to do the same courtesy, because it is important, and in fact we might have had another incident of that as we speak. In relation to the 3^rd bullet in terms of de-construction - this raises a particular difficulty for minority parties and we are in support of this. Firstly, because it raises a disadvantage for certain minority parties in terms of manpower. Quite clearly there are political parties who cannot be on every single cluster who had to exercise a decision and that raises a difficulty. We are in that position. We do not have adequate members to serve on all those working group. Secondly, it does raise a disadvantage for minority parties in relation to oversight in particular, because clearly if you do not have a representative on every single working group as a minority party, you are in a disadvantage in terms of the work that that work group deals with in terms of oversight. I gave people the courtesy of keeping quiet while they were making presentation and I appeal to you to have the same courtesy extended to me. In relation to the 4^th bullet that the Committee commits itself to meeting its goals and commits itself to possible further sittings, I understand from the previous Chairperson of this Committee that there was a tradition in which this Committee did make another day of the week available, in fact Mondays. I understand the issues raised by other members of the Committee, but I do think that such a sitting is required and we need to look at the practicalities of it and the possibilities of ensuring that we can do it, because we do have a tremendous workload. Then in relation to training - we would strongly support this bullet. Also in relation to a document that you have tabled last week in the Committee in which you highlighted a number of other areas where we would need to exercise oversight and where in deed we need some knowledge building in particular in relation to oversight over public entities and other issues which do not necessarily fall under the training agenda of APAC, so we strongly support that bullet. And then in relation to the last bullet - the principles holds and our support for that principle holds. I would just like to express a word of caution and the support for the principles around the Rules and the tension between rules and discretion that are embedded in the Rules. But in relation to that bullet we also need to concede that the first bullet and this bullet are not in isolation from one another and any difficulty or disagreement that arises in relation to the first bullet has an immediate impact on that bullet. So while we can give our unequivocal support to the bullets that highlight certain difficulties we would like to express a word of caution in relation to the unresolved debate in relation to the 1^st bullet and the impact that has on the last bullet.

[Dr G Koornhof] Just a correction, when I spoke about trust I did not refer to trust only coming from the majority party. Trust is amongst ourselves as individuals, not from one party to the other that we owe. If you mean by de-politicizing to focus on our work, to get the work done, and to focus on the mandate of the Committee that we hear, then I agree with this bullet, to focus on the mandate. If on the second bullet - not to allow personal attacks - that is the duty of the Chairperson and you as Chair must guide this bullet to say that you will not allow personal attacks. The 3^rd bullet of the 3 working groups - I think that will be determined by 1 or 2 of how successful we are in 1 and 2 and that would be a natural outflow. Of course the minority parties are being disadvantage by more then one working group or any working groups. We have decided when we came to the 3 working groups we allowed a trial period for that, and we extended that trial period. You will find it in the meetings. And if there is any other solution or proposal that we want to make let us go into another session or 2 sessions trial period and see whether it works or does not work. For the same reason to be consistent with that on the 4^th bullet - is the third sitting practical? If it is not practical then we just need to work smarter and get more work done in the plenary that we have. Page 2, the top bullet, training - we fully agree. The point that I wanted to make earlier on the Chairperson of SCOPA - I think it is very important that the Chair be allowed to chair the meeting and here especially we as political parties should allow the Chair to chair the meeting on the one side and do not put obstacles in your way subtly or deliberately. Secondly, the Chair should also have very focused leadership to lead this Committee, not only in the way of doing things but also in guiding the day-to-day operations. So it is a two-edge sword on that bullet.

[Mr B Nair] We have had a fairly good discussion from this morning and wide views were expressed. It would be essential if you give us an idea at the end as to your own views on the responses that were made, because you have asked for a response. We aired it here quite openly. Now one of the key issues that were last emphasis by Ms Taljaard was the question of the 1^st bullet and linked it with the final bullet. We are fully cognizant of the fact that political issues or policy matters are really not discussed at the SCOPA level. This is the prerogative of the portfolio committee etc. and we have from time to time liaised with them when it came to policy issues. So policy matters we have not discussed. We have exercised our oversight. We should stick to that and it is understood by everyone that we exercise our oversight over financial management etc. and that we should continue do to. I do not want to repeat what Mr Smith said about our role here as political animals. It does not follow that because we are members of a particular political party that we are pursuing a particular political agenda and absolving ourselves or overlooking our fundamental role of the oversight of financial management. The other is to link this with the issue of the so-called fundamental principle underpinning that the Chairperson of SCOPA must come from the opposition party. This is linked to the report that appeared in the newspapers where ANC members are alleged to actually wanting you, chair, to drop out and the implication here, very subtly done, is that they want to take over the chairman of SCOPA. Just forget it. We are fully cognizant of this fact and this was as I told the meeting earlier this morning, we constantly in the personal of interaction with yourself and so on we have never ever discussed the question of you being replace or on the other hand having any ANC member as Chairperson of SCOPA that want to disabuse you of and as a manner of fact we want to reiterate that position. So that would link this de-politicization as contained in the 1^st bullet or the last is a subtle innuendo that the ANC members are after grabbing the chairpersonship of SCOPA. Please disabuse yourself. On the whole the other issues have been thoroughly canvassed. I just want to say that we sympathize with the DA and the members of the parties who could not serve on the 3 committees. They have worked so far and there is no way out but for us to continue and we will tease this out overtime as to whether we are really functional, whether we are actually having problems etc. and we will properly have to re-argue it. But in the interim there is no way out but for us to function as 3 groups so as to overcome the colossal amount of work which you refer to in bullets 4 and 5. How are we going to overcome that when we are now going to haggle over issues at plenary as we have done so many times? Now in brief that is what I wanted to say and we look forward to you and we only hoped that we have convinced you for a way forward and the way forward is to let us get stuck into the colossal amount of work that confronts us.

[Mr L Chiba] I think there have been various bullets that had been outlined in your document. I would have like to see an additional bullet in the document and that additional bullet is the basis of meaningful and constructive discussions in SCOPA. I am not going to touch on the question of trust. That has been dealt with very effectively and sufficiently. It is a very valid point for a solid, meaningful and constructive basis for discussions within SCOPA. I would like to add one or two other points. One of them is the question of mutual respect. If we do not have mutual respect we are not going to get very far and we have to take a decision on that. The second aspect is the question of unquestioned integrity. It is linked up with the question of trust, but I think unquestioned integrity is also a solid foundation and a solid element for meaningful and constructive discussion. Thirdly, it is very important that when we discuss we all need to conduct ourselves with absolute dignity. If we do not do that even points of initially agreement can end up into points of disagreement. So all of us must conduct ourselves with absolute dignity. I admired Dr Koornhof today when he said that it was a political mistake when they did certain things. So frankness, honesty and openness are also very important elements. If we do not do that then our discussions are going to take a different turn. I believe that these few aspects and elements of the basis of meaningful and constructive discussion is something that we need to give very, very serious thought. I do not say that we must discuss it here and now, but at some point in time each and everyone as political parties and as individuals must give very serious thought to that. There are two other things that I would like to mention. The question of political point scoring - that needs to be avoided. No matter where it comes from, because that interferes with our work. Secondly, the manner in which we handle the media - we often handle the media in different ways. We know that. I do not want to site a whole lot of examples that have caused problems and impacted negatively on the work and the relationships in SCOPA. I think we need to prove that.

[Chairperson] You do not talk very often but when you do your display a very good grasp of the virtuous that the Committee should aspire to. So I really appreciate the wisdom that you offer the Committee. We all had an opportunity to address the issues I raised. I thank you for that and following that discussion, almost inadvertently or sometimes not so inadvertently, other members have raised other issues. So they have almost accepted the invitation which I tried to create. And in that there has been a discussion. It has acknowledged that there are fundamental problems. I am not sure how far we have gone on each of those problems that we acknowledge to and how we are going to resolve them. It was asked of me to make a more direct response to some of the issues particular those issues which I raised and which I said I feel that strongly about. On the issue of the committee being de-politicized - I put the issue down here and I said I feel strongly and I could offer a lot of explanation as to why I feel that way and what it was in going back through the records that convinced me that we are politicized to a point where we almost self-destruct at times. Perhaps on that word trust keeps coming up. One thing I would like to link there is that very fundamentally it would seem that and if I could put words in peoples months, but they are free to correct me, but the fundamental issue of mistrust is that on one side, and let us say, the ANC side there are enough signs and enough on record to suggest that they are very suspicious of opposition people and the Chair and the motives that at times we on this side, let us say, are out to embarrassed the ANC. We are out to purposely do things which are doing to embarrass the ANC government or individuals within the ANC or politicians and the ANC's need to watching out very carefully and to defend that when it happens. We can go through about 10, 11 or 12 instances on that. On the other side we were trained that we have a suspicion about the ANC that they keep losing sight of the ball, the ball which is about, and Mr Blaas brought the point up earlier on, that this is about public finances and the rules are all written. They are internationally. We all know what best practices are and there is a right and there is a wrong. So the suspicion from the other side could be that we are just trying to say what are right and wrong but the ANC are being selective. Whenever there is a wrong and that could embarrass them then they throw the rules out the window. And there is enough on the records to show that both these positions perhaps exist. So all those people who brought up the issue of trust we are going to have to kill that. Otherwise we are going to be watching each other and sometimes not watching the issues that SCOPA should be watching. That gets interpreted in many ways. The point that Ms Taljaard brought up earlier, and it has been in the back of my mind as well, is to what extent have the ANC been instructed and actually practiced political control over this Committee, through the work groups, through the marginalization of the Chair? Again, if I go through the evidence there is a lot to suggest that. You might want to defend it and, as somebody said earlier on, the ANC might read through these and come up with a different version. I accept that. It is one of those questions which we need to answer. Another thing that runs through here there is a big divergence in how we look at SCOPA work. I perhaps am sitting at one extreme that to me there is a lot of SCOPA work and we should be dealing with it passionately. If there is something wrong you should be angry at whoever it is. If it is a Member of Cabinet or a Director-General or whoever else. If they have done something that has wasted the states money then that is an injustice to the society and our job in looking after the society and overseeing and scrutinizing. We should be angry and we should be deal with that issue in a courageous way and make our recommendation. But to do that it calls on us to illustrate in this very technical committee to continue to have the right sort of schooling and education. I have been clear on this before. I do not think we get it from APAC. We are throwing money away there. I really cannot get myself to attend the executive meetings. I believe a couple technical issues that we need to get abreast off to really understand what is right and wrong, we need to work on it. And those of us who are just Members of Parliament from different backgrounds, we have not all gone through to Universities and Public Finance, but there is a special responsibility in this Committee being the technical committee to continue to become increasingly proficient at the issues. I want to see that happen and I want to see us take every report and I want to see that the way we interacted with the department to go many times deeper that it presently goes. So when we deal with a department we deal with the issues that department knows that we are watching them, we do not accept this and that they really make an even bigger attempt next year around not to do that. In times we used to achieve that in the first SCOPA, but SCOPA on the other hand, and this is the view I am opposing and maybe it is an incorrect view, is that SCOPA can just become a machine. It is a lot of work guys. ……………………………………………. and the Auditor-General will send out these questions and at the end you will say we kind of touched basis. The Director-General sees through that and it worries my, especially after last year. That is one of the things that was on my mind in writing these that we cannot afford to another year like last year. Already the Director-Generals are saying we are not so scared of SCOPA. And worst when I think of if I was an Auditor in the Auditor-General's Office and I went into the thorough audit and given with problems and saw SCOPA just brush over them and a few routine questions came back and he has been waiting now to see how we are going to deal with these things that the Auditor were able to find. The next year he is going to do it a little less enthusiastically. Those guys at the auditor-General's office also need to be motivated. They are most motivated by the way we deal with their work. I have done a few test cases. The one I finished last week was the Department of Agriculture. What did the Auditor-General's Report say for the pervious financial year and what did this Committee do, what correspondence came and what came back? You see they are huge issues. Whenever we dealt with them it is dealt with, let us wait for the next year. My appeal is, and I make the reference here to the Business Plan, that we have to go deeper. We have to engage these things more thoroughly. We have to be part of the solution. We are critical catalysts. If we do not work it feeds back and the problems do not resolved in themselves that quickly, if at all. And in a way those 2 things that I have just presented cut through what motivated my thinking across all these issues. I suppose that the last issue which is the only real personal issue, you have to sit in the chair where I have been sitting to know what it feels like. I have taken the time to chat to the odd ANC chairperson here and there as to what they do and what they do not do. Quite frankly, they do have greater license than I have. Some is saying is it part of a political control or not with a lack of trust or what is it? I do not make any decisions in this Committee and I find it very frustrating. I find that the committee system blocks me up to a point even though I go through every Report. Somebody said earlier on that I am not engaged. I go through every Report. I read all the correspondence. I have books and I make notes on everything. I have books going back on departments for 2 or 3 years. Such is my interest of where they going to and what they are doing. So it is not that I am not interested. It is just that there have been instances here which I picked up earlier because where conveners have in a proud way and ones who does not in such a proud way told the Chairperson it is not your business, it is our business. And so you see especially towards the end of last year, it happened that 1 or 2 people in a work group said that they think this is an issue and that is not an issue. That filters through. ………………….. presents his story. There is no disagreement ever with what a convener says we are going to do and it goes through as a plenary decision. I do not know if that is right. I do not know if that is really bringing the best out of this Committee to say that we have all applied our minds and came up with really considered positions. Whether is taking their work to the depth that we need to. It is also on the view of that to saying my thoughts on the 3 work groups saying to do away with the 3 work groups might seem something like a contradiction when I am saying there is so much work and we need to go deeper. That is why I am saying the only way to do that would be to find more hours and it was a tradition in this Committee for a number of years that we sit for a period just to see whether we were behind schedule to catch up. We do not do that. It did come up a couple of times last year, shall we try and find an extra day? The Committee felt that we should not. Last year we really let ourselves down and we let the Committee down, and let Parliament down. In my view, we were pretty superficial with a lot of the work we did. So that just underlines what I am saying here. I respect the position taken by all parties today and I am going to go through it and asked myself is there anything that I can do? Was there any advise that will give me the wisdom to take the Committee forward? I need to think about that quietly. For now I can just say thank you again for the views. But whatever happens we need to immediately switch focus back to the planning and in the five minutes we got decide what are we going to do next week. We need the report backs from the sub groups at sometimes. I think the Committee's agreement is they stay in place. I did hear that Group One was going to proposed a Hearing even though, I think, the Committee asked the work groups last week to just go and look back on last year's work. Group One have gone as far as proposing something for the current year. Maybe we need to take advantage of that. If that is correct, Mr Smith, and at least say let us start getting the Committee working on setting up our first Hearing?

[Mr V Smith] I do not want to talk on that. I know that you have asked for it, but there is one question that I want to raise or put to you in terms of your response. You correctly said that you want to go and think about this thing quietly, but at the same time this Committee cannot wait until you have made up your mind. We must be able to say to you that if you are going to think about it quietly we must respect that, but you need to come back to this Committee and give us what your decisions are, because everything else hinges on your thinking on how you see the process going forward. What we would request is that part of our planning, I do not know if a week or a month is sufficient time, I do know what it is, but you need to give us an indication that you have thought about it, business carries on and this is my answer. My uneasiness is that you want to think about it quietly. In the meantime there is not finality on this matter and we carry on business. Maybe you should indicate to us that within a week you will come back and talk to this Committee before you talk to anybody else. I am saying in terms of your decision, because you owe it to us, before the media or whoever you speak to. You can talk to your political party, you can talk to your family. But you must give us an indication as to when do you think the parties' response to your letter, how do you then process it in your own mind.

[Chairperson] There are 3 issues here and I need some advise. The one, I hear what I say with the 3^rd issue, which is myself. I owe it to the Committee to think about it quickly and come back, which I will do. But there is nothing to stop the Committee moving strongly into its planning phase. Just 3^rd on the original issue, how do people feel about our discussions today? I think for the good that came out of it is that we spoke frankly. We realized that we have to do something about the trust and the mutual respect and maybe that would solve one or two of the other problems. Is there anything else that we need to be doing and taking these issues forward?

[Mr B Kannemeyer] In your closing remarks you might have touched on one or two of the things, but some of things that came out during the course of the meeting is hearing something that each individual of us must and need to take to heart. Mr Gerber mentioned a very important thing about the impact of what we say when we speak to someone on other people without realizing it. I will give you a simple example. After Mr Chiba have spoken you made a remark which make me feel that the contributions that I have made during day was useless. You did not realize it when you said that, but it is a small thing and it is about building trust. I thought there was at least a little iota of value in what I have said. You let all people speak of opposition parties. I thought Mr Blaas's input was taking us tremendously forward, but unfortunately you respond after Mr Chiba has spoken and you acknowledge and you praise. Now you never intended to reflect on what the rest of us have said. That was never your intention. But unfortunately it had a unattended consequence, likewise on your reflecting on the work that we have done last year. I really thought that as a group initially with myself and Ms Nomvula that we really tried to apply our minds on all the votes that was in front of us, not only in terms of pushing through work, but I really thought we tried to work. And again, it is part of what Mr Nair have said earlier, when other people also do the assessment that you have done, maybe we would have come to different conclusions. My appeal would be when you do think through these matters that you try to bring that also in mind. In the same way that you find yourself in a particular position, in the same way that you had to respond to the frustrations and things that you have gone through this Committee so have each one of us. Maybe that will assist if you go through and you sit down and you reflect that you cannot just take yourself out and forget about the other people and how also your actions or inactions have also impacted on the rest of us. That is all that I want to suggest. We have learned a number of valuable lessons from all the different inputs that was made. It was a very constructive session that we have had. I think it will definitely contribute to the respect that we will have for one another. It will assist and it will be a starting block on building trust amongst one another. I agree with those who say that establishment of trust is not a mechanical process where you can switch on a button and say now we trust one another and tomorrow you switch it off and say now we do not. So that would just be my appeal that even for the rest also even though we had not made statements that we will go and think about it. And when you come back to us that we actually say this is where we are and this is how we move from here.

[Mr G Woods] You also have given us an idea on a way forward, which I will come to in a minute.

[Ms N Hlangwana] I have two points. I found it very difficult to believe that you made a remark that accuses the ANC component in politicizing this Committee we lose our oversight role. It is a very serious accusation because in doing my work in Public Accounts I have never been in a situation where as the ANC we would say no this is wrong, but we are not going to agree that this is wrong. And I know this is what we have been accused of, but it is a very serious accusation which maybe sometimes we need to deal with it more properly and with more reasons. People should tell us why they think that. The other point that I wanted to speak on was the point that you have raised about in the SCOPA before we were more productive. I do not see the difference between the previous SCOPA and now, because we have improved in doing our work now, because we have got Business Plans. We go into issues and deal with them. Breaking the Committee into these clusters make us go thoroughly into these Reports. My own opinion would have been if you believe as the Chairperson and you have the right to believe that we are not doing our work properly, we have got a backlog, we must when we give our own cluster reports give an indicative. Mr Kannemeyer has spoken about this. Our cluster does not have a lot of work that are outstanding from last year. I do not know about the other clusters. But we all need to agree that it should not be your own opinion alone that we are not dealing thoroughly with Reports. I believe that we should have our own opinion as a cluster to say do we need to have a Hearing on this or not. And I think that having Hearings with departments does not mean that we are doing our work. We cannot have a Hearing but still have gone through the Report and decided that we do not need a Hearing. I think it important for you to remember that it was decided when we started using this cluster process that the Chairperson would sit in any cluster where he believes that he got either an interest or it is his own opinion to help the cluster to look into that Report properly. And unless there is something that I do not know of that any cluster would have said to the Chairperson you cannot sit in this cluster or you cannot question in a Hearing because you do not sit in that cluster. If it has happened then it is not correct. I am hoping that if and when you conclude you will help us to say these are the decisions that we have taken, unless I have missed that point, in regards to the bullet points that we have been discussing.

[Dr G Koornhof] Just to be practical, I agree with Mr Smith that it is only fair for you to reflect on what we said today as Chairperson and inform this Committee of your views on what we have discussed. We do not have to put pressure on you, but it is very important that you do it as soon as possible. Can I suggest that when we meet to hear your views, which is important for the future of this Committee, that we take a half and hour of the next meeting and just go into a close session again. It need not to take half a day or a whole plenary. And whatever the outcome then we have to focus on the job after that, but I want to appeal to you that this is done as soon as possible, that we could just established a solid relationship between the Committee and the Chair both ways, from us to your as Chair and from your as Chair to the Committee members. And if there is any common ground let us build on it. If it is not common ground let us say so, but let us do it in a close session. I do not know what rule you are going to make, but from now till that meeting you must just put some guidelines whether we talk to outside, whether we do not talk to anybody and that we just be bounded in everybody and how do we operate from here?

[Ms R Taljaard] I would like to strongly associate myself with the comments made that we need to ensure that you have an adequate period to reflect on the issues at hand. Perhaps one would also need to say that you are not the only one who has some reflection to do. I think individual members of this Committee by virtue of this discussion and by virtue of some of the issues that were raised need to asked some questions of themselves and I include myself. And we need to ask those questions and also determine our own interaction and path in this Committee, because that is as important as the reflection that you have to do for the future of this Committee that holds true for every single member of this Committee.

[Chairperson] I really do respect, and Ms Taljaard is correct, we all need to think on this. Because I am the Chairperson I need to think perhaps more quickly then anybody else and I certainly will do that. And if it is appropriate at our next meeting what Mr Kannemeyer and Dr Koornhof have suggested that maybe we should reserve the first part of our next meeting just to sum up and see where we are and how we are going forward. Let us keep an open mind to the issues. Ms Hlangwana asked that I should be more specific in my reflection. I would say Ms Hlangwana there are issues that have been touched positively that perhaps move through all of these and I am very encourage by that, but at another level I do not know if we got quite to the issues on how the Committee is being politicized. That would be my personal view whether we went far enough. My view on wanting to work in a plenary also and the Committee have taken a decision there that it does not want us to stay with the groups. My view that we need to become more involved by sitting more often, I think the Committee is more cautious about that. The training - there seem to be support that we can never do enough training. The issue of the Chairperson - we did not really get to the issues. We have made some process. It does give me enough to go and think about. Dr Koornhof raised a point and I got a note from Mr Smith saying what do we do about the media? I do not know if anybody has any views. I do not know if we need to have a Committee statement. I do not feel the need to say anything more then that we have discussed the issues in this letter amongst other issues. That there are agreement on some and not agreement on the other, but the Committee will be mulling over it and conclude its thoughts next week. I do not know if that would satisfy or whether parties would just like to go and say whatever they feel they should say? Our visitors are outside, so if we could get a decision on this. I see some people are saying no. Mr Masithela is not agreeing with what my suggestion is.

[Mr N Masithela] I do not want to go back to that debate. I thought that on the basis on the debates on point one it would say that it does seem that we seems to be agreeing on this particular matter. Not because the DA and the UDM is saying this and whatever. The ………………………………. whilst I am not happy about the manner in which it was discussed. that should be part of that decision, but having major ruling we should leave that outside. I do not think that at this stage you should go out and say as a Committee that we have discuss matters which have not agree about. If we would want to polarized as a Committee we should do that. I do not think we should rule our Chair expect as a Chair to say we have discuss this matter. We are in the next meeting going to finalize the discussion. That is all. For me that would help.

[Dr G Koornhof] I would strongly oppose with your words you use go to the media on. The moment the media knows there is any difference of opinion we do not have to come back to this Committee. We can just stay away. So I would caution us to say if it is a Committee statement it is under discussion and we will discuss it further. That is all. The less detail we give to the media at this stage the better for the future of the Committee until you have reflected on your opinion and all of us have reflected of what has happened today. Then we can come back to the next close meeting. I agree with the point you make a statement on behalf of the Committee saying little as possible, saying it is under discussion it will be followed up as soon as possible.

[Ms R Taljaard] If we all came to this meeting with the right intention which was to rehabilitate this Committee and there are those of us who believe that that is necessary, then we need to be honorable in that commitment and part of that honorable commitment is to do exactly what Dr Koornhof is suggesting. I think we cannot mislead one another. We need to be honest in this plenary and admit that there are areas of grave disagreement particular around the politicization, but if we are honest in our attention to try and amend this Committee then a bland statement about the discussions and a bland statement indicting that matters are in fact under discussion would be sufficient.

[Chairperson] I am trying to get to the nub of the agreement. Firstly, do we want one statement from the Committee, and that statement is to say as little as possible, not to go into detail, but to suggest that we are looking at the issues that were raised in the letter and other issues that members have brought. We have made process in discussion these and we will hopefully conclude our deliberations on these next week. Will that satisfied everybody? Thank you very much. We are not going to have time to talk about planning. Can I chat to Mr Smith from Group One and if they are proposing a Hearing I can go and get that wheel turning? Do I have the Committee's agreement?