Representative liberal democratic governance requires a wellfunctioning and credible legislature. The legislature’s standing as the sovereign organ of state authority reflects its primacy as citizens’ representatives. Legislators around the world are now utilising information and communication technology (ICT) to improve previously strained citizen-representative interactions. In an era of citizen dissatisfaction with democratic institutions, the paper contends that parliaments, as a democratic cornerstone, are constantly striving to create enticing services while considering the difficulty of achieving accessibility and transparency in citizens’ e-participation. To this extent the paper observes that legislative institutions in many African countries, including South Africa, are ineffective at informing and interacting with their constituents, resulting in significant citizen-representative disengagement. It is noted that in South Africa, ICT has been identified as having the potential to increase Parliament’s involvement and collaboration. Findings also show that, in contrast to most African countries’ challenges such as inadequate infrastructure and capacity building, South Africa’s exponential growth of ICT has aided in strengthening interactive deliberation between citizens and their representatives, reducing citizens-representative estrangement, and making democratic processes more inclusive and transparent. Hence this paper argues that the South African Parliament, like other modern parliaments in emerging countries, must be considered as a body capable of delivering meaningful contact with citizens via credible and universally accessible means, such as e-parliament foreshadows Though the full potential of e-parliament in South Africa has yet to be realised, the paper concludes that with effective ICT strategic planning, e-parliament offers a ray of hope for responsive and accountable governance in Africa. To weave the argument articulated, the paper adopted desktop methodology, it leaned heavily on existing pieces of literature such as journals, textbooks and archival material.

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