Cape Town - Members of Parliament (MPs) will learn how to get their hips shaking to the country's soccer jive, the diski dance and learn how to blow the vuvuzela, the Speaker of Parliament Max Sisulu said to howls of laughter in the National Assembly on Tuesday.
Sisulu said Parliament's Portfolio Committee of Sports and Recreation had organised a one-day training seminar at a Cape Town studio.
"The training will focus two issues, one is the optimum use of the vuvuzela and the other is the techniques of the diski dance," he said.
Presenting Parliament's Budget Vote, Sisulu said the National Assembly had already held a joint debate with the National Council of Provinces on the World Cup and would host a further debate before the kick off of the soccer event, which he hoped Bafana Bafana would attend.
Presenting his budget vote, Sisulu said last year had seen a heightened engagement in Parliament and the introduction of the Money Bill Amendment Procedure and Related Matters Bill.
He said the bill would introduce more oversight over the executive as MPs would for the first time be able to have their say on how the national budget was constructed.
Sisulu said a workshop on the budget would be held for MPs on the 19 and 20 May and added that it was key that MPs learn to grapple with the in's and out's of the budget and its various technical details.
A parliamentary office would also be established to provide advice to Parliament on the budget and Sisulu said it was important for South Africa to learn from other parliaments around the world that have established such an office.
Parliament also aimed to increase public participation especially in committees and to increase the role it played in international relations.
He said its role must extend beyond mere ratification of trade agreements and that the Minister of Trade and Industry Rob Davies had suggested that Parliament review its role to ensure MPs have greater say in trade agreements.
Parliament had been assigned 1.92 percent of the budget or R1.57 billion - an increase of 6 percent over last year, he said.
The budget did not include the remuneration of MPs which would come direct from the national revenue and would total R393m for 2010/2011.
Sisulu said though it was encouraging that most parliamentary committees had crafted strategic plans - which would help in how additional amounts will be spent - committees only spent 69 percent of their R2.4 million budget last year.
Underspending was "undesirable" as committees were the "engine room" of Parliament, he said.
He attributed the under spending to the introduction of a new administration last year, but also to bad planning.
Parliament planned to begin rolling out an e-Parliament to bring MPs closer to the people, but a recent survey by Parliament found that only 15 percent of MPs were computer literate and were able to do things such as blog or connect with social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook.
A training session will be held from July both a beginners, intermediate and advanced courses.
The Chief Whip of Democratic Alliance Ian Davidson said the accountability of the executive to Parliament still remained a problem.
Davidson said while many ministers chose not to appear before parliamentary portfolio committees, a number of ministers did not answer many written questions.
He said as of today ministers had failed to answer 515 parliamentary questions within the specified time and that many of the answers that have been provided by ministers were either "non-answers, flippant, frivolous or an exercise in obfuscation".
Cope's deputy president, Mbhazima Shilowa said there was a need for more effective debate in Parliament, in place of what he referred to as the present prepared speeches aimed at point-scoring, rather than at tackling the real issues.
ANC chief whip Mathole Motshekga called on Parliament to connect with the people through one-stop parliamentary constituency offices, to ensure more South Africans could become "their own liberators to undoing poverty".
*To learn how to do the diski dance visit http://www.buanews.gov.za/x2010world_cup_diski_dance
