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Dear friends and fellow South Africans,

On 3 June this year, Parliament held a Joint Sitting of the National
Assembly and National Council of Provinces to debate the 2010 FIFA World
Cup. With much fanfare, the House then adjourned and our national
festivities began.

Next Wednesday, some ten weeks later, a Joint Sitting will again convene to
debate South Africa's successful hosting of the World Cup. In the
intervening period, little of significance happened in Parliament.

But this week, MPs gathered in the House for the first time since June and
hit the ground running. The first sitting saw the second reading debate on
the South African Reserve Bank Amendment Bill, and the IFP registered its
dissent. The question must be asked why the finalization of this Bill was
top of the agenda after such a long recess period.

As the IFP pointed out, the Bill was being finalized before parties even had
the opportunity to hold their first caucus. Yet there is nothing urgent
about the Bill. Why then did the Standing Committee on Finance process it in
a single morning, during a week in recess in which no other committee met?

It is important to note that public inputs on this Bill were, without
exception, negative, and the Reserve Bank required that the Committee keep
all documentation secret. This is reminiscent of Eskom's proposed price
hikes, where the Committee on Public Enterprises was required to approve
tariff increases while the actual figures remained a secret, and public
input was likewise wholly negative.

One cannot help but wonder how seriously Government takes the interests,
concerns and ideas of its people. Is there really transparency in
governance, or do our leaders have blanket authority to withhold information
and ignore dissent, all in the name of the national interest? One need not
even allude to the debate around media freedom.

During the first ten years of democracy, as the Minister of Home Affairs, my
Department faced the mammoth task of transforming the entire legislative
field of migration management. In preparing a Green Paper, White Paper and
draft Bills, I included more stages of public participation and consultation
than the Rules of Parliament even required.

We even opened the migration discussion to the international stage, inviting
experts from around the world to a conference in which they could consider,
criticize and inform our draft legislation and policy directions.

This was an expression of my belief that public participation is the
cornerstone of democracy. The people must be informed, heard and taken
seriously. For every input we received on our immigration bills, my office
prepared a substantial response, evaluating the arguments and explaining the
reasons for the inclusion or rejection of every comment. This was enormously
time consuming and laborious. But I keenly felt the responsibility to put
citizens before bureaucracy; a responsibility which seems to be slipping
from the shoulders of government.

I was pleased that my legacy of dialogue continued through the Immigration
Advisory Board (IAB) which I established in 2004. The following year, during
the launch of the Report of the Global Commission on International
Migration, the IAB's Chairperson announced a conference in preparation for
South Africa's participation in the United Nations' High Level Dialogue on
International Migration and Development.

Having chaired the G77 and China and hosted its Coordinating Mechanism on
the issues of migration, South Africa's contribution to the High Level
Dialogue (HLD) carried great significance. The IAB published a Call for
Papers and all interested parties, be they academic, non-governmental,
business, civil society, foreigners or officials, were invited to make
inputs on six broad migration themes.

But the IAB became sidelined and the conference never took place. Instead a
workshop was held for specific invited role players just two weeks before
the HLD, so that the voice of business and NGOs could carry into the inputs
of the South African Government. A report from the workshop only became
available after the HLD and one wonders how anything the public said could
have influenced government's position on such short notice.

Of course one cannot point fingers and say that this is where the decline
started. But it is clear that over the years there has been a marked
decrease in the weight given to public consultation and public inputs. This
does not bode well for democracy. I often quote Abraham Lincoln's maxim that
no man is good enough to govern another man without his consent.

Democracy is not meant to be exercised every five years through the ballot
box. It is intended as a living, unbroken dialogue between the people and
their chosen representatives. The poor voter turnout in July's municipal
by-elections confirms that even local elections are not the best vehicle for
dialogue at community level. Interaction needs to be continuous in an
environment where public input is valued and taken seriously.

It is interesting that a recent IPSOS Markinor opinion poll showed a decline
in voter support for almost every opposition party, including the DA, since
2009, while support for the ANC has marginally increased. Even a marginal
increase is significant, as it tips the ANC into the two thirds majority it
so clearly desires.

Why is support for opposition parties dropping? One of the ID's clever
slogans is "More Voice for Your Vote". But a problem arises when the
electorate feels their voice carries no weight, no matter which party it is
channeled through. Opposition parties can become as loud as they like.
Unless we address the pervasive undercurrent that bureaucracy trumps
citizens, the ruling Party will continue to view itself as good enough to
govern, even when the people stop consenting.

Yours in the service of the nation,