Here’s OUTA’s annual assessment of Parliament

Between June 2024 and June 2025, parliamentary committees held 1 165 meetings, nearly double the number recorded in the closing years of the 6th Parliament. MPs submitted over 6 700 written questions, but only about one-third were answered within deadline. 

This is what the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA) found in its annual Parliamentary Oversight Report. The 2025 report, The review nobody escapes, was released on 29 October 2025. The report is here.

This year’s report draws on insights derived from the ParliMeter dashboard, developed by OUTA, the Parliamentary Monitoring Group (PMG) and OpenUp, and co-funded by the European Union.

You can find this data in the report, and ongoing updates on the ParliMeter dashboard.

The data reveal a paradox: Parliament is working harder; however, not necessarily smarter. Oversight remains too often reactive rather than preventive. Committees expose corruption and inefficiency, yet few findings result in sanctions or reform.

Oversight is happening but often without consequence.

Encouragingly, the report found that public engagement has reached record levels.

Between November 2024 and June 2025, more than 1 000 stakeholders – from community organisations to universities and youth networks – participated in parliamentary dialogues, hybrid hearings and civil-society briefings. OUTA welcomes these efforts but warns that participation must produce outcomes. “Listening without acting is not democracy, it’s performance,” the report cautions.

Persistent weaknesses

Despite progress, structural problems persist across committees:

• Delayed enforcement of the Auditor-General’s findings allows financial mismanagement to continue unchecked.

• Capacity constraints in committees such as the Portfolio Committee on Police, the Portfolio Committee on Justice and Constitutional Development, and the Portfolio Committee on Home Affairs weaken follow-through.

• Vacancies and frequent member reshuffling erode institutional memory.

• Legislative bottlenecks remained and issues and, by December 2024, 22 bills were still awaiting presidential assent.

The way forward

OUTA’s report proposes six reforms to turn oversight into impact:

1. Enforce Parliament’s Oversight and Accountability Model with clear sanctions for non-compliance.

2. Link public-service professionalisation to measurable performance outcomes.

3. Expand open-data dashboards tracking committee resolutions and ministerial responses.

4. Institutionalise hybrid participation with transparent feedback loops.

5. Strengthen cross-committee collaboration, replicating successful models like Scopa-CoGTA.

6. Publish quarterly performance scorecards on attendance, response times and oversight follow-up.

These practical steps would move Parliament from activity to accountability, and from visibility to impact.

Read more

OUTA’s Parliamentary Oversight Report: The review nobody escapes is here.

The previous six annual reports in this series are here.