Parliament's Churn Rate Is Outrageous
In business the percentage of employees who are replaced every year is the employee churn rate. If you worked for a company and over a period of ten years nearly 8 out of 10 employees were replaced, the place would be an absolute mess.
Which is why with 82% of parliamentarians having been replaced since 1994 it’s no wonder that the National Assembly has turned into a bunch of rubberstampers. A full 25% of parliamentarians were replaced in the 2004 elections alone! That’s ridiculous!
Now while many think that this is good as it prevents old crusty politicians making themselves nice and comfortable so they never have to work again, it can unfortunately lead to a weakening of parliament, whether that was a deliberate or accidental outcome we’ll never know.
Consider SCOPA one of the most important (if not the most important) committees in parliament. It’s chairman, PAC MP Themba Godi, was only elected in 2004 and so far and SCOPA has only managed to review 50% of the 286 auditor general reports from 2005. From the linked article SCOPA is said to be barely functional.
Another factor is that junior MP’s are less likely to challenge laws or directives handed down from the executive, something that has been quite apparent lately.
In my opinion this needs to change. The ideal way would be to implement a semi-constituent system where a set amount of MPs are elected to represent constituencies. But considering that will never happen any time soon I’d be happy if they just allowed some parliamentarians a bit of time to actually to do some effective work.