ANC Chief Whip's Office, 26 August 2014
ANC will not stand idly by as democratic institutions are attacked
The Office of the ANC Chief Whip rejects suggestions from some analysts and
commentators seeking to pin the blame for the eruption of hooliganism on
Thursday on the Speaker of the National Assembly and the President. A
misinformation being peddled here is that because the Speaker comes from the
ANC, she is biased and acted to protect the President from accountability.
On the other hand, the fabrication goes on to allege that the President
failed to respond sufficiently to the question hence the rowdy behaviour.
It is the tragedy of our public discourse that the anti-Zuma prejudices all
the time seem to trump principle. An outrageous conduct that would
ordinarily be roundly condemned by all sensible South Africans is excused
and justified because it is directed at a figure some section of our public
commentators and the media dislike. Suddenly we see our public critics
burying their heads in the sand, seeing no evil, hearing no evil and
speaking no evil on matters of principle. Similarly, we see those who have
repeatedly failed to unseat the ANC through democratic elections over the
last 20 years unsurprisingly now applauding an attempt to destroy legitimate
democratic institutions with a hope to weaken a democratically elected
government.
Because some section of the media, some pundits and opposition have joined
forces to publicly glorify the blatant acts of unruliness that played out in
the Assembly, even an institution supporting democracy jumps onto the
bandwagon to surf on the populist wave. An earlier constitutionally sound
principle in which Parliament would have been the decider on the adequacy of
the President's response is inexplicably and conveniently abandoned because
the wave of media opinion now faces a certain direction.
We therefore wish to deal with this misinformation through the following
facts:
1. The Speaker of the National Assembly only acts within the prescribed
rules in the management of the sessions of the House. The rules are not the
creation of the Speaker or the ruling party, but are made and adopted by all
political parties represented in Parliament. Once the rules have been
adopted, all parties and their members are expected at all times to abide by
them. The Speaker, as she had done previously, managed the sitting fairly
and without fear, favour or prejudice.
2. It has been claimed that because the Speaker comes from the ANC she is
bound to favour the ruling party. The EFF has even called for an amendment
to the Constitution so that a 'neutral' Speaker in form of a retired judge
should preside over debates in Parliament. In all established democracies
with democratic constitutions, a party that win election selects the head of
the executive and head of the legislature. Our democratic constitution
emphasises the principle of separation of powers in which the judiciary, the
executive and the legislature exists separately and their powers are not in
conflict with each other. By having a retired judge (who is practically
still regarded as part of the judiciary) doubling as a head of the
legislature would be tantamount to the judiciary heading another independent
arm of the state. Only in a dictatorship such separation of powers are
disregarded.
3. The Speaker gave the President an opportunity to respond to the question,
which he did even in the face of howling and other disruptive acts.
Questions time is one of the mechanisms for holding the executive
accountable. However, they are also a terrain of political contestation.
This means that there can never be unanimous political consensus amongst
parties regarding any answer provided. It is outrageous for any MP to engage
in unruly conduct just because, in his or her political opinion, the
question has not been dealt with satisfactorily.
4. The EFF's disruption was planned beforehand and the details of this plan
were an open secret in the supporters were bussed in to drive the disruption
from the gallery to complement what the MPs were doing on the floor of the
Assembly. Therefore, regardless of what the President might have said the
disruption were planned to take place. It is therefore unfortunate that the
media would fall for the blatant propaganda that the disruption resulted
from the President's handling of the question
5. There is a misguided campaign relating to the President's payment of the
money, which was initiated by the leader of the EFF, that seeks to discredit
the current parliamentary process set up to consider the report of the
President on the security upgrades at his private home. In our
constitutional democracy such lawful and legitimate processes are important
in ensuring that matters are dealt with thoroughly, fairly and openly to
ensure that appropriate solutions are arrived at. Malema himself is enjoying
fair and just processes in relation to his R18m tax case and his corruption
case emanating from his companies' alleged looting of public funds in
Limpopo. We reaffirm our support for the ad hoc committee to perform the
task for which it was tasked without fear, favour or prejudice.
6. Since the start of this new term of Parliament, the EFF MPs have been
involved in rowdy behaviour and have indicated openly that they would not
play by the rules - which they described as colonialist. We are in the
fourth month since the beginning of this Parliament and we are yet to see
any proposal from that party regarding amendment to the rules. This confirms
our view that their conduct has nothing to do with the rules but an
orchestrated plan to relentlessly discredit Parliament and other democratic
institutions with a view to render them ungovernable. The ANC will do
everything within the rules and the law to preserve the integrity and
decorum of the institution in defence of our democracy.
It would be a biggest error on the part of the EFF and its fellow travellers
to think that this movement will fold its arms as our hard-fought democratic
gains and democratic institutions are discredited and destroyed. We welcome
the tough stance taken by Parliament as well as the measures announced by
the Speaker this afternoon to deal with the mischief-makers behind
Thursday's disruption.
Issued by the Office of the ANC Chief Whip
Enquiries:
Moloto Mothapo, 082 370 6930
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