Cape Town - The African National Congress (ANC) has come out in support of National Assembly speaker Frene Ginwala's order for Winnie Madikizela-Mandela to appear in Parliament before Thursday to be publicly reprimanded for poor attendance.

The support signifies an improvement in relations between Ginwala and her colleagues after their differences recently.

The most recent disagreement was last week when she called for disgraced former chief whip Tony Yengeni to resign as an MP while her colleagues suggested a more procedural way of dealing with the matter. In the end Yengeni resigned.

Yesterday ANC chief whip Nathi Nhleko said the ANC supported Ginwala's demand of Madikizela-Mandela to appear before Parliament within 10 days.

Nhleko said that his office had also written to Madikizela-Mandela emphasising the need for her to make herself available.

He said the ANC was in the majority on the ethics committee and in the National Assembly and both had endorsed that Madikizela-Mandela be fined 15 days salary and be reprimanded by Ginwala.

This followed her being found guilty of failing to declare donations of more than R50 000 a month in her declaration of members' interests.

If Madikizela-Mandela fails to present herself in the house in the next two days she could find herself the subject of disciplinary procedures from the ANC itself. Nhleko said that the matter of Yengeni was now with the ANC's disciplinary committee and was no longer within the jurisdiction of the ANC in Parliament.

He said that if MadikizelaMandela failed to appear then the reasons for her failure to appear would have to be studied.

He said that Madikizela-Mandela's continued membership of Parliament was a matter for the ANC's national executive committee to decide.

There have been repeated opposition calls for MadikizelaMandela to be fired as an MP notably from the official opposition Democratic Alliance (DA). Yesterday DA chief whip Douglas Gibson said that it was significant that the ANC's parliamentary leadership had sided with Ginwala and against MadikizelaMandela "it will be fascinating to see whether she will abide by party discipline or continue to be defiant".

Nhleko said the ANC was committed to getting a new powers and privileges of Parliament act on the statute book as soon as possible. The current legislation is silent on sanctions for members who mislead the house and commit other offences while new draft laws which will allow action to be taken against errant MPs is in a special committee where it has been redrafted 10 times.

He said that the bill had provisions which would address some of the issues and it was hoped to have it formally before Parliament by Easter.

With acknowledgements to Wyndham Hartley and Business Day.