Most, but not all, strategic and annual performance plans met the deadline of midday 11 March, set in a letter from Speaker Baleka Mbete to leader of government business, the liaison between the legislature and executive, Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa. In the letter dated 23 February 2016, seen by Daily Maverick, Mbete asks Ramaphosa to ensure the submission of strategic plans so that MPs could scrutinise these as part of their constitutional oversight function.

There was no sight of anything from energy by Thursday last week. While some ministries tabled their departments’ plans by deadline, those for entities in their portfolios followed later, according to the Announcements, Tablings and Committee Reports (ATC), or the record of Parliament’s work. And so it emerged that the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) plans are now chapters in the justice and correctional services documents, as the police published their revised strategic plan at the back of the annual performance plan. While the state-owned SAA, which moved from public enterprises to the Treasury, has submitted a corporate plan to Parliament, Eskom has not. It is understood the power utility’s document has been submitted to the public enterprises ministry and will emerge when MPs are briefed.

These plans are key to the MPs’ constitutional oversight function, but must be read carefully. In some instances targets are lower than what actually was achieved the previous year, or targets emerge amid a soup of other numbers without explanation.

The SAPS annual performance plan gives police an additional 39 seconds in the average national target to respond to “alpha crimes”, jargon for crimes in progress and serious crimes. It is now 19 minutes and five seconds, although the 2014/15 annual report lists as “achieved” an 18 minutes and 26 seconds national average response time. So-called “bravo crimes”, or serious crimes already having taken place, get the same treatment: the target now is 24 minutes 33 seconds, although a national average 23 minutes and 13 seconds response time already has been achieved. When it come to “Charlie crimes” such as drunkenness and loitering, the SAPS says it wants to do a little better.

The NPA achieved an audited actual 91% conviction rate in the country’s high courts in the 2014/15 financial year, which dropped to 87% in the 2015/16 financial year’s estimated, still to be audited, performance. The target is pegged at 87%. The same approach applies to conviction rates in complex commercial crimes and organised crimes. And while 130 government officials were convicted for corruption or related offences in 2014/15, the target now is just 91, without an explanation.

Rural development wants to settle 454 land claims in the 2016/17 financial year, up from 373 a year earlier. However, a total of 101,803 new land claims have been lodged since the re-opening of the claim window, which closed in December 1998. This is in addition to the still outstanding claims from 18 years ago.

The agriculture, forestry and fisheries annual performance plan says 120,000ha of underutilised land in communal areas and land reform projects will be put into production in the 2016/17 financial year. That figure stood at “3,262ha planted in the North West” in the 2014/15 financial year, and comes against the acknowledgement that agriparks and related food production will be negatively affected by “the worst drought since 1904”.

For parliamentary committees the 10-day period to process these information-laden plans will test the depth and thoroughness of oversight. The budget, in the form of the Appropriations Bill put to the House, must be passed by the end of June at the latest.

But local government elections loom large. And the 2016 poll is widely expected to be a crucial test not only for the governing ANC, which has vowed to win every council regardless of a declining showing in the 2011 and 2014 elections.

The opposition DA is making a concerted play to add Nelson Mandela Bay (Port Elizabeth) and Tshwane to the metros it governs alongside Cape Town. The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) are energetically pitching in these, their first ever municipal contests.

And so the budget deadline has been moved up – and MPs are scheduled to be relieved from oversight, legislative and other parliamentary duties for some three months of “constituency period”.

Co-incidentally, Parliament says constituency periods are “to encourage MPs to remain in contact with the people they represent”, to help solve problems and to “report back to their constituents on what is happening in Parliament”. For this, Parliament allocates money to all political parties represented in the national legislature. DM

Photo: Speaker of Parliament Baleka Mbete reacts during an answering of questions session by South African president Jacob Zuma in parliament, Cape Town, 11 March 2015. EPA/NIC BOTHMA/POOL.