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The Parliamentary
Caucus of the African National Congress this morning held its last Caucus
Meeting for the year 2009, ahead of the final sittings of both the two
Houses of Parliament this afternoon. Members of Parliament will from next
week depart for constituency work in their various communities and also use
the time to take a well deserved rest.

President Jacob Zuma and Deputy
President Kgalema Motlanthe also attended the meeting.

This last Caucus
Meeting was important as it afforded our representatives in this institution
an opportunity to reflect on the organisation's performance and the
challenges encountered since the beginning of the fourth democratic
Parliament in June. When we began this term of Parliament, we emphasised
that as MPs in this activist Parliament, we have a collective responsibility
to the people of South Africa to ensure that the commitments made by the
organisation in its National Conference Resolutions, Elections Manifesto and
as articulated in the State of the Nation Address are fully
implemented.

Presenting the keynote address to this Caucus meeting,
President Jacob Zuma concurred that assessing the work of the ANC in
Parliament during this year was necessary to ensure that we begin the next
session in 2010 with a clear sense of what needs to be done to improve on
areas we are struggling with.

The President noted that when the ANC took
office following the national elections this year, it did so amid
challenging economic circumstances due to the global economic crisis, which
has severely impacted on economic growth, job creation and government
finances.

"We said at Polokwane, and again in our election manifesto, that
the creation of quality work lies at the heart of our economic policy. Yet,
since we came into office, the improved pace of job creation of recent years
has slowed. The economy has shed jobs. This has set back, at least for the
moment, our efforts to tackle unemployment and poverty. It has placed a
greater burden on the state as we seek to alleviate the plight of the poor.
Since the economic activity is down, so too is government revenue. This
means that we are having to implement a programme focused on the delivery of
better health and education services with less money. We are having to speed
up land reform and provide more effective support to emerging farmers, and
step up the fight against crime, with less money."

"As the Minister of
Finance recently announced, this all means we are going to have to borrow
more. It also means that we need to improve financial management within
government, tackle inefficiencies and wastage, and step up our efforts to
eradicate fraud and corruption". The President stressed that Parliament
needed to play a role of checking if state institutions were indeed taking
such measures. The ANC, rather than the opposition, should be driving this
process - he said.

The President also reminded MPs to be accountable to the
people, as they were elected to serve their interest.

He said: "We must
therefore remain accountable and responsive, but as a fundamental part of
our work. We need to attend to the people's needs, and be seen to be
attending to their needs. MPs need to be visible when working in
communities. This is difficult given the demands of the parliamentary
programme, but we should find ways of maximising the impact of constituency
work. This highlights the importance of Parliamentary Constituency Offices
as one-stop centres to help residents access services and information. We
must use PCOs to continue the work of public representatives even when they
are not there. This means that we need to resource them properly, staff them
with capable people, and develop better management and coordination
systems".

In his presentation on the work of the Caucus during this year,
Chief Whip Dr Mathole Motshekga noted with appreciation that, for the first
time ever, the senior leadership of the movement have demonstrated keen
interest and commitment in the affairs of Caucus. Both the President and the
Deputy President are not only regular attendees of this Caucus but have
provided the much needed political counsel on numerous occasions either
voluntarily or when requested to do so. Our broader leadership must be
commended for living up to the Polokwane Resolutions, which called for the
strengthening of Caucuses as instruments for robust oversight and political
management.

This year was characterised by high level of enthusiasm and as
the Majority Party in Parliament we managed to play a meaningful role when
we provided leadership and presented superior arguments during various
debates. Despite the financial and human resource challenges we inherited
from the previous term of Parliament, we managed to perform our constituency
work and ensured the necessary interventions on service delivery challenges
in various communities.

Despite our achievements in a number of areas, we
have noted a number of weaknesses which we undertook to eradicate when
Parliament resumes next year. These challenges relates to issues of lack of
discipline on some of our MPs, which translates in poor attendance of House
sittings and meetings of Portfolio Committees. We commend both the Speaker
of the National Assembly and the Deputy President for their resolve to deal
with the situation in which some members of the Executive fail to avail
themselves to answer questions in the House.

It is our view that
individuals our people elected to represent them in this institution are
leaders in their own right and should therefore avoid a situation where they
need to be policed in order to discharge their responsibilities. Failure to
attend meetings and sittings regularly threatens our ability to implement
programmes aimed at bettering the conditions of the lives of our
people.

"We are however confident that notwithstanding the mistakes that we
may have committed during this time, the lack of experience with regard to
the intricacies of the institution of Parliament (as some amongst us are
new), and the general challenges we may have encountered along the way - we
have not betrayed the commitments we have set for ourselves and have not
acted contrary to the political theme that both the President and the Deputy
President set when we began with this Fourth Democratic Parliament," said
the Chief Whip in conclusion.