24
Feb 2015 | Tony Leon | Original
Publication: Rand Daily Mail
YOU
couldn‘t make it up. Peering at the world through chic European spectacles,
shod in Italian shoes, chauffeured in a German car and the beneficiary of
R25-million from a US-listed mining house, National Assembly Speaker Baleka
Mbete assailed Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema — and for even
worse than being a “cockroach”.
According
to a report of her speech in North West last weekend, Mbete — the person
mandated by the constitution to ensure his parliamentary rights — said proud
anti-imperialist Malema was actually “working with some Western countries in
their quest to take over South Africa”.
Malema,
who sports an überexpensive Swiss Breitling watch and is hoofed in Gucci
loafers, repaid this rhetoric in similarly debased currency in parliament on
Tuesday. He accused President Jacob Zuma of referring a bill back to parliament
because of pressure from Western companies.
Mbete‘s
subsequent and welcome apology for her attack on Malema simply underpins the
incompatibility of being, simultaneously, a top gun in the ANC leadership and
the presumed protector of members‘ interests, including those in the
opposition.
Thabo Mbeki |
But
in the midst of this inflammation of hypocrisy and rhetoric, spare a thought
for the institution that these two polarising figures — and one-time allies —
represent.
Before
interrogating their roles in debasing parliament, we should in fact thank
Malema and Mbete for highlighting two fundamental trends.
Certain
signposts on parliament‘s downward road are illuminating.
First,
under Thabo Mbeki the national legislature became, as I once described it, a
“forum for non-debates and non-accountability”.
Mbeki
got away with skipping question time and ministers routinely evaded censure for
not answering questions because the executive amassed power outside of
parliament and the opposition regarded itself as bound by the rules of the
institution.
Respect
for the office of the president was then absolute, and even I, the leader of
the opposition to his administration, would stand up before and after Mbeki‘s
speeches. He was the fortunate beneficiary of the mantle of his sainted
predecessor, Nelson Mandela.
Also,
despite his prickly personality, evasion of accountability, inflicting ruinous
HIV/Aids policies on his people and green-lighting stolen elections in
Zimbabwe, there was no stain on his personal conduct in matters of state.
Mbeki
also helped to create, and presided over, a growing economy. Critical elements
of civil society, from the press to the business community, therefore simply
averted their gaze from the predations under way in parliament.
But
it was during these post-Mandela years that parliament‘s rot began. Perhaps the
greatest white-anting of the institution was hobbling parliament‘s quest to
investigate the arms deal. In late 2001, the executive rewrote the damaging
conclusions of the joint investigative task team into the affair, in the hand
of the president‘s parliamentary enforcer, Essop Pahad.
This
lessened its damning conclusions and protected the cabinet. But it damaged
parliament. The infamous arms deal — the hard case that settled into bad
parliamentary and political precedent — first detonated most of the
institutional damage made plain in more recent times.
The
first person who was convicted of corruption in this saga was Schabir Shaik,
whose acts of corruption deeply implicated Mbeki‘s successor, Zuma. Zuma‘s
escape from the coils of his own corruption charges, which haunt his
presidency, hobbled parliament long before he assumed the highest office.
The
2001 strong-arming of parliamentary processes to protect the executive
occurred, ironically, under the speakership of Dr Frene Ginwala. She otherwise
provided a form of independence from the encroachment of the ruling party on
the rights of opposition members and had, in the main, some regard for the
rights and privileges of the institution over which she presided.
But
even her impartiality and independence — rickety though they proved at that
defining moment — were too much for the rampant presidency. After Mbeki‘s
emphatic re-election in 2004, she was fired as speaker. Her replacement was
Mbete, in her first of two terms as speaker.
By
this time, the ANC no longer countenanced robust contestation by the opposition
or even the occasional free-wheeling of its own members. During the Mandela
era, frontline cabinet minister Joe Slovo had been able to question the
necessity of the arms acquisition, and free-spirited ANC backbencher and singer
Jennifer Ferguson could abstain on the abortion vote.
Now
Mbete was joined in a quest for total control by the deeply militaristic Tony
Yengeni, who was installed as the ANC‘s chief whip.
In
this combination lay further seeds of decay. Question time was curtailed,
follow-ups were limited and the speaker was accorded the right to “vet”
questions to the president.
The
speaker then defiled her office in 2006 by being at the front of the queue to
wave Yengeni off to jail. He was the second political figure to be named, then
convicted and imprisoned, for accepting an arms deal bribe. But the real stain
on Mbete‘s office was that Yengeni had in fact been convicted of defrauding
parliament, the very institution the speaker was entrusted to protect.
The
next milepost on this slippery slope was “Travelgate”. In 2007, five years
after the whistle was blown (and the whistle-blower victimised) 32 MPs received
criminal convictions and sentences for cheating parliament, but the speaker
allowed them to hold on to their parliamentary seats. The institution was now
truly discredited.
Little
surprise, then, that in 2007, when I vacated my parliamentary and political
leadership, my successor, Helen Zille, declined to lead the main opposition
party from parliament, choosing to do so from the City of Cape Town and later
from the provincial legislature. Her decision both underlined and assisted the
sidelining of the national legislature.
Enter
Malema and the EFF, stage left, after last year‘s elections. Alongside 399
other MPs, Malema swore to uphold the rules embedded in the functioning of the
legislature — but had, from day one, no intention of being bound by them.
No
longer dealing with a rule-bound opposition force, the ANC realised that the
old approach of back-door manoeuvring and the emollient and inclusive approach
of Mbete‘s successor as speaker, Max Sisulu, would not suffice. Time to recall
Mbete, now also ANC chairwoman, to fly the party flag and enforce its diktat
from the speaker‘s throne.
Then
the Nkandla bomb exploded. It was the gift that kept on giving to what was now,
on this issue at least, a united opposition.
From
his minor perch of just over 20 seats, Malema, aided by a report of the public
protector, seized the moment. With just four words — “pay back the money” — he
branded Zuma as an unaccountable and self-enriching politician. Untroubled by
the mayhem he unleashed, Malema had captured the national spotlight.
Last
Thursday night, before the state of the nation chaos unfolded before a now
enthralled, possibly horrified, nation, an opposition MP asked a cabinet minister
what he expected to happen. This was in the light of Malema‘s threat to demand
the missing answers to the question he had attempted to ask of an unresponsive
and, later, absent president.
And
so it did. But in the process the naked use of force, the illegal jamming of
cellphone signals and the sight of a president suffering an acute form of
political autism were made plain. The security state made its unattractive
reappearance 25 years after the enforced departure of securocrat-in-chief PW
Botha.
But
this time the pushback was different, more diverse and much stronger.
No
longer could the executive trample constitutional rights underfoot. Two court
applications immediately ensued and are ongoing. The press gallery, in an
unprecedented display of revulsion, rose in protest. The leader of the official
opposition, Mmusi Maimane, found his true voice, perhaps for the first time.
His “a broken man presiding over a broken
society” mantra was aimed at Zuma. But it probably resonates way beyond the
opposition constituency.
The
speaker remains in office but, even post-apology, is bereft of authority and
legitimacy.
In
a constitutional democracy, might does not equate with right.
Authority
has to be coupled with principled persuasion.
In
the debate this week, it seemed that all parties had pulled back from the
brink. The presiding officers were at pains to make even-handed rulings, and
Malema read out a speech of thudding dullness, but left his wrecking ball at
home.
And,
for the first time in many years, both the nation and the state were entirely
focused on parliament. In the wreckage of recent events lie, hopefully, the
seeds of renewal.
This article first appeared in the Sunday Times