27 May 2014 | Tony Leon | Original Publication:
BDlive
 |
| Baleka Mbete, national chairwoman of the ANC |
ONE of the bitchiest pieces of repartee in show business, between the
acclaimed lyricist of My Fair Lady, Alan Jay Lerner, and musical supremo Andrew
Lloyd Webber apparently went along the following lines: "Alan, why do
people always take an instant dislike to me?" asked Lloyd Webber.
"Saves time," Lerner responded.
Perhaps the fact that Baleka Mbete has a beautiful singing voice brought
this conversation to mind on hearing of her recall last week to the speaker’s
chair in Parliament. But more in point is that it will certainly save time and
distance to bring the writ and fist of the African National Congress (ANC) and
its Luthuli House headquarters to Parliament rather than the other way around.
Towards the end of the recent elections, it was reported — and not
denied — that departing speaker Max Sisulu, a person of considerable standing
and experience and of some independence, was "summonsed" to Luthuli
House to "explain himself" in regard to his acquiescence to an
opposition request that an ad hoc committee be appointed to determine
Parliament’s response to the public protector’s report on Nkandla.
According to the constitution, the National Assembly over which the
speaker presides is charged with "providing a national forum for public
consideration of issues" and "scrutinising and overseeing executive
action".
Yet Mbete is deeply conflicted from the start: she intends to be both
national chairwoman of the ANC and speaker of the National Assembly. In the new
Parliament, more than a dozen non-ANC parties seek the protection of the
speaker to advance their interests and rights and to hold the very executive,
of whose inner councils she is such a leading member, to account. Don’t expect
too much scrutiny and oversight on her watch.
But then, for Mbete, this is all rather familiar territory. Before she
had risen to the very apex of power in the ruling party, she presided as
speaker of Parliament from 2004 until 2008. Yet, ironically, although Mbete
joined in the party firing squad that politically assassinated Thabo Mbeki, she
also helped his presidency close down Parliament as a centre of rigorous
political contestation and scrutinising the executive.
I recall, in the first iteration of Mbete’s speakership, that she was
summoned to the post as a sudden and unexplained replacement for the serving
speaker, Frene Ginwala. Ginwala had provided Parliament with some lustre, and
aside from her involvement in the parliamentary cover-up of the arms deal
scandal, proved to be fairly independent. She later advised that she first
heard of her axing on the radio, en route to a caucus meeting.
Helen Suzman, described by the man after whom the ANC headquarters are
named, Chief Albert Luthuli, as "a bright star in a dark chamber",
recalled that her impressive solo performance in the apartheid Parliament was
made possible only by the impeccable behaviour and protection she received from
the arch-conservative speaker, Henning Klopper. As she put it: "Our
political convictions were miles apart. (But) he used to say to me at the
beginning of each session: ‘I don’t agree with a word you say, Helen, but it is
your right to say it and it is my duty to see that you enjoy that right’ — and
he certainly did!"
Ironically, although there are now 88 more voices in Parliament echoing
some of the sentiments once articulated alone by Suzman, they should not, all
these decades later and even under a democratic constitution, expect such
consideration as she enjoyed.
Two clues, of many that Mbete’s previous speakership salted back then,
are hardly encouraging for the new Parliament. In September 2007, the nation
was transfixed on the state of, and circumstances surrounding, the new liver
acquired by then health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang. The Sunday Times
then revealed that she had been convicted of theft in 1976 while employed at a
hospital in Botswana. An intrepid parliamentary colleague, Mike Waters, asked a
written parliamentary question: had she ever disclosed this conviction to Mbeki?
Less than an hour before the question was due to be answered in Parliament,
Waters received a call from Mbete’s office advising him that the speaker had
ruled the question "out of order" for containing "offensive and
unbecoming language" in transgression of Parliament’s rules. When Waters
stood up in Parliament to protest that the speaker was "covering up for a
thief", he was suspended for five days from the house.
But it was also during Mbete’s first speakership that thievery caught
hold of Parliament itself, which was defrauded of more than R36m of public
money, when hundreds of MPs were investigated in the "Travelgate"
scandal. In contrast with the speed with which Mbete acted against Waters, the
investigation of this great stain on her watch was characterised by
foot-dragging and worse.
If past performance is any guide in these matters to future conduct,
diminished expectations are in order for the new Parliament.
• Leon is the author of Opposite Mandela
(Jonathan Ball) Follow him on Twitter: @TonyLeonSA OR on Facebook: facebook.com/TonyLeonSA
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