IT IS a no-brainer that a commission without commissioners ceases to operate. But, by the second half of this month, the Commission on Gender Equality (CGE) had only two commissioners left, both with terms expiring before the middle of June.
So it has been déjà vu at the CGE: in 2006-2007, it had no commissioners, for which the blame should be laid at Parliament’s door, as it failed to ensure new appointments. During the latest replay, in 2010 the number had already dropped below the legal requirement of seven commissioners.
If the commission is not legally constituted, it could have far-reaching implications for the exercise of its powers, which include the issuing of subpoenas and holding of hearings.
As matters stand, the lack of commissioners has forced those remaining to disband internal sub-committees responsible for financial oversight and for projects on gender-based violence and other CGE work, according to Janine Hicks, whose term as a commissioner ends on June 7.
The delay in appointments seems to stem from confusion over numbers to be appointed to fill vacancies (the CGE Act provides for the appointment of 11 commissioners plus a chairperson), as well as differentiation between part-time and full-time commissioners.
Parliament has placed before the Presidency a list of nine commissioners to be appointed, a process the Presidency claims to be finalising.
Among those recommended is Wallace Mgoqi, confirming that the ruling party still regards Chapter Nine institutions as parking spaces for loyal comrades. Mgoqi may be known for defying the DA after his axing as Cape Town city manager but definitely not for any gender work.
Meanwhile, the successful candidates have been in limbo, not knowing if and when the Presidency will effect the appointments.
Hicks, with outgoing commissioner Kenosi Meruti, commission chief executive Keketso Maema and management, earlier this month presented the commission’s strategic plan for 2012-2017 to the portfolio committee on women, children and people with disabilities.
It is notable that among the constitutional Chapter Nine institutions particularly the CGE seems subject to delays in appointments.
The commission has been without a chairperson since 2009, another appointment that the Presidency failed to make. Maema acted in the position of CEO for two years before being appointed in 2010.
Feminists close to the process regard these problems as stemming from the ANC’s toying with the idea of having the commission disbanded, especially after public protector and auditor-general investigations into misconduct and fraudulent and irregular expenditure in the 2007/2008 and 2008/2009 financial years.
A controversial independent audit recommended in 2008 that the commission be placed under “mentorship”; Parliament’s ad hoc committee on the review of Chapter Nine and associated institutions, which the late Kader Asmal chaired, recommended in 2007 that the CGE be collapsed into the Human Rights Commission.
While the commission has not been able to avoid controversy in recent years, as its last chairwoman, Nomboniso Gasa, left under a cloud, the outgoing crop of commissioners has worked hard to clean up the commission’s act. The commission is due to receive its second unqualified audit from the auditor-general, testimony to its return to sound governance.
It has also been applying its full powers to call hearings and subpoena government departments and companies to appear before it.
However, while the outgoing commissioners have turned things around, Parliament still has to attend to the long overdue alignment of the CGE Act with the 1996 constitution and the Public Finance Management Act, recommended by its own ad hoc committee on the CGE forensic investigation in April last year.
Previously the justification for pressure to scrap the commission was that it was dysfunctional. Why it would make sense to scrap the organisation rather than to fix it, is unclear. Particularly, as Hicks notes, since gender power relations have not substantively improved between 1996 and today.
Some of the impetus for scrapping the CGE emanates from the new institutional kid on the block, the ministry for women, children and people with disabilities (or “the ministry for everybody except able-bodied adult men”, as an activist joked).
l Christi van der Westhuizen is a journalist and an author. This monthly column series is made available by the Open Society Foundation for SA to monitor the health of our democracy.