She works kind-of-hard for her money
A review of MP committee attendance between June and December 2024
Being a South African member of Parliament (MP) is a well-compensated job, if you are lucky enough to have it. The lowest-paid MP earns just under R1.3-million a year and their perks include heavily subsidised housing, reimbursement for laptops, cell phones and data, and 88 free one-way plane tickets a year. In a country with over 32% unemployment and a median salary well below R6 000 per month this must seem like untold riches to the average South African.
You might think that anyone lucky enough to get the job would seize the opportunity with both hands to be the best MP possible - and many do, perhaps even most. Unfortunately, in our party-centric system, career longevity relies more on party loyalty than public service. Historically, there also has been no effective monitoring of MPs’ performance in the national assembly and therefore no public accountability mechanism.
This publication aims to change that by shining a light on MPs’ performance in committee meetings for the seventh democratic Parliament. This first report covers the period from 14 June to 6 December 2024 and will be followed by quarterly updates reviewing the most recent parliamentary term.
Committee work is the most important job of an MP. It provide an important oversight function of the executive branch and, perhaps most importantly, committees are where MPs process the legislation for their relevant portfolios. The Parliamentary Monitoring Group (PMG) and the People’s Assembly (PA) provide detailed information about attendance in committee meetings. The PMG measures attendance at the committee level while the PA keeps track of individual MP performance.
Committee attendance is only the beginning of MP oversight: it confirms whether an MP was present for a meeting, not the value of their contribution. Still, it is the minimum performance requirement for an MP to show up for work. We hope in the future to improve on this report by monitoring the actual contributions of MPs in committee meetings through the PMG’s transcripts of committee meetings.
Incomplete information and mitigating factors
The analysis in this report is based on the data made available by the PA platform, at the time of publication. There are over 30 MPs without attendance numbers, and we have excluded ministers and deputy ministers from the analysis.
More importantly, there are serious critiques of the methodology behind the PA’s calculation of attendance. (The methodology is available here.) It seems that some MPs are expected to attend two committee meetings at the same time, a clearly impossible task, and are marked absent for the meeting they could not attend.
We believe that our methodology for determining the hardest-working MPs is fairly robust, although some deserving people may have missed out on their well-deserved accolades. It is also likely that the poor performance of other MPs may be overstated. We apologise in advance for these errors and will continue to refine our analysis.
Administrative and scheculing problems may well be depressing the numbers. Many MPs were expected to attend over 40 meetings in the past six months. A heavier workload is also partly due to the bloated cabinet, with over 70 of the 400 members of the National Assembly serving as ministers and deputy ministers, leaving the remaining 330-odd MPs with more to do.
Although the available data is incomplete and unrefined at the time of publishing this report, it does summarise the attendance of almost all MPs. The trends for MP attendance are of concern, particularly at the party level. The MK party and the EFF have shown particularly poor performance in the first six months of the new administration, and this has a direct effect on the ability of opposition parties to hold the government of national unity (GNU) accountable.
All visualisations in this report can be reviewed in their live, interactive forms through the link below the visualisation. A summary of this report with all interactive visualisations can be found here.
MP attendance by party
The column graph below shows the attendance of about 330 MPs in committee meetings, organised by political parties. This does not include MPs for whom data was not available at the time of publication. Only parties where there was information for at least two MPs are represented.
MPs are expected to attend at least 75% of their committee meetings to obtain a ‘bronze’ ranking, at least 80% to achieve a ‘silver’ ranking, and at least 90% attendance for a ‘gold’ ranking. To date, MPs are not punished or censured for a poor attendance record, although you would expect some kind of disciplinary action if you missed one out of four scheduled work meetings in the private sector. Too many MPs have an attendance record far worse than this.
Attendance for ANC and DA MPs is generally good, although there are too many MPs who have failed to show up to work more than 75% of the time. Attendance is much worse for MK, EFF, and most of the smaller parties for whom the data is available.
The picture looks starker when the number of MPs in the red zone is expressed as a percentage of total MPs by party. The graph below shows the proportion of MPs per party that achieved the gold, silver, bronze, and red standards for attendance:
Over half of the MPs in the Progressive Caucus failed to attend 75% of meetings and all of the MPs (for whom the data was available) from ActionSA, the ATM, BOSA and the NCC were in the red zone. The Progressive Caucus includes MK, EFF, ATM and UAT parties, holding 100 of the 400 NA seats. It is the most important - virtually the only - opposition to the GNU.
The ruling GNU has almost 72% of MPs in the NA and it is vital that opposition parties provide the checks and balances to the GNU’s legislative agenda. So far they are failing to carry out this very important mandate and they are not being held to account for their failures.
MPs who are taking their job seriously
There are 48 MPs with a perfect attendance record: 24 from the ANC, 18 from the DA, three from the EFF, two from the MK and one from the IFP. Most of these MPs have not had a heavy workload: 26 of the 48 attended a maximum of 15 meetings.
A better measure of MP performance is to consider the MPs with a significant workload (a minimum of 30 committee meetings) and then calculate which of these MPs had the best attendance records.
The 12 MPs in the graphic below were each expected to attend at least 30 meetings, and their attendance records are at least 80% for the period. Eight of the MPs are from the ANC, two are from the DA, and one each from Al Jama-ah and the MK party.
MPs who played truant too many times
At the other end of the continuum, there are 23 MPs who have attended less than half of their scheduled meetings (minimum of ten scheduled meetings). Six are from the EFF, five from the IFP, five from MK, two from the FF+, and one each from ATM, NCC, DA, BOSA, and the ANC.
To be fair, 12 of these were expected to attend at least 30 committee meetings and five of the 12 were expected to attend over 40 meetings. Heavier workloads may be partly responsible for the poor attendance. However, other MPs were able to attend 30 or more meetings and maintain an attendance rate of at least 80%.
