CPA AFRICA REGION ELECTS GAUTENG SPEAKER NTOMBI MEKGWE AS ITS TREASURER FOR THE 2021-2024 TERM OF ITS LEADERSHIP
Parliament, Sunday, 14 November 2021 – The South African Legislative Sector has welcomed the election of the Speaker of the Gauteng Provincial Legislature, Ms Ntombi Mekgwe, as the Treasurer for the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA) – Africa Region, during the Annual General Meeting held in Abuja Nigeria.
Ms Mekgwe takes over from the West Africa CPA-Africa and will serve her three-year term up to 2024. Her election to the continental executive of CPA was hailed as a great success by the leader of the South Africa delegation and Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly, Mr Lechesa Tsenoli.
“Ms Mekgwe’s election is a befitting recognition of her good leadership traits in the South African Legislative Sector, the Southern Africa sub-region and the CPA-Africa Region at large. We feel honoured both as South Africa and the Southern African block of Parliamentarians. It affirms and encourages the exemplary performance of many women representatives in national and sub-national parliaments and legislatures,” said Mr Tsenoli. (Find an audio clip of Mr Tsenoli: https://iono.fm/e/1126027)
Reflecting on her election as Treasurer of the CPA-African Region at its 51st conference, Ms Mekgwe expressed her gratitude for the confidence and trust placed on her by the continental body of Parliamentarians. She expressed hope that the resolutions adopted at this 51st Conference of the CPA-African Region will be progressively and successfully implemented by all national and sub-national legislatures. She said the fight against Covid-19 and its impacts on women, children, poorer communities, national economies and on lives and livelihoods of people, has to make a real difference.
The five-day 51st CPA – Africa Region Conference, held under the theme: “African Parliaments and the challenges of Covid-19 pandemic”, adopted a number of resolutions on what continental Parliamentarians must do to fight Covid-19, build continental resilience and readiness for fight pandemic, and strengthen research and development to reduce the continent’s dependence on advanced countries of the world for life-saving medicines. The Parliamentarians condemned the non-equitable share of the world’s capacity to fight the global pandemic through inter alia, vaccines, most of which are patented and therefore inaccessible to many under-developed nations especially in the African continent.
The 51st CPA-Africa Region conference took a number of resolutions that included:
- Strengthening of African Parliaments’ oversight on governments’ strategies; use of funds, loans and aids secured in the name of combating the Covid-19 pandemic;
- Step up efforts to fight all forms of corruption;
- Driving the adoption and tracking of the execution of the Abuja Declaration that calls for the allocation of at least 15% of national budgets to the health sector;
- Enhance developmental models aimed at solving economic challenges and ensure achievement of the Sustainable Development goals, many of which suffered setbacks because of the global health crisis occasioned by the outbreak of Covid-19;
- Enacting of laws to protect the interests of African countries in the context of skewed global power relations and access to resources to fight the pandemic including patenting of vaccines and to enhance continental research and development as well as local production of vaccines;
- Stepping up efforts to fight gender-based and domestic violence that reared its ugly face during Covid-19 lockdowns (click here for the resolutions document: https://tinyurl.com/3upepfus)
ISSUED BY THE PARLIAMENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA