20 Apr 2014 | Dene Smuts | Original Publication: PoliticsWeb
Outgoing DA MP notes that the undiluted list system
has been devastating to our democracy
Farewell speech by Democratic Alliance Member of Parliament, Dene Smuts,
April 13 2014
I am honoured by the presence of members of the executive of the
provincial and metropolitan spheres. But I am honoured most of all by the
presence and participation of Tony Leon, and Michal Leon who is a guest in her
own right - she is quite simply the wisest woman I know.
It was Tony's vision of the "shining city on the hill" that
guided the DA to the point where we can say to the electorate: here is the
proof that we can govern, that our ideas work. It was also Tony who built the
party to the point where it is poised to break the 20% barrier nationally.
You can't do that unless you can do what a party political leader is
supposed to do: bring jou skapies bymekaar, en hou hulle bymekaar. He is
revered for the way in which he kept his flock together inside the party, but
he is not sufficiently acknowledged beyond its confines for the party political
leader that he was.
He was a party political leader, I am a lawmaker and I bid you goodbye
in that capacity.
At the opening of Parliament on 13th February this year I
could not help thinking, as we sat in the Chamber awaiting the President's
arrival, that South Africa was falling down Alice's rabbit hole into
Wonderland.
One female MP undulated across the floor like a giant caterpillar. She
is the poor lady whose attire featured in many newspapers after she cut the
dress off and wore only the lining. (I am not going to say her name because she
is a very nice young woman.) What newspaper stills could not capture was the
rippling and undulating effect of flesh under the thin and shiny lining. She
was a giant deep yellow caterpillar undulating across the carpet after coming
to the NCOP front benches to greet the Premiers. If, like Alice's caterpillar,
she had been blue, we would have had a blue wave right there.
My benchmate James Selfe and I surveyed the general scene and agreed we
were drifting into a whole different dimension here.
In the front benches proper on the ANC side, Minister Malusi Gigaba was
wearing an SAA pilot's uniform and peaked cap. We have witnessed a touch of the
Gilbert and Sullivan before, but never before I think, not inside the House, a
politician in full fancy dress faked uniform.
At the closing sitting on 13th March, a month later, to be
fair, there was some flamboyance on the opposition side. Graham McIntosh, once
of this tribe and now I forget of which, wore his Scots clan kilt and had
himself piped out of the Chamber for the last time by the wailing lament of a
bagpipe. He had a video cameraman walking backwards recording bagpiper and
departing MP all the way to and through the lobby.
But it was Malusi Gigaba who remained in my mind's eye the next day,
when four SAA flights were delayed by three hours or so at Cape Town
International (while BA flew off at the appointed hours). We were nevertheless
assured that the international flights with which we were connecting would wait
for us.
As my plane came in to land at OR Tambo, we were told that SAA staff
were standing ready to take us to our waiting international flights. Our
designated young man had not been briefed but gave my boarding passes for
Frankurt and Geneva one look and started sprinting, calling out like Alice's
white rabbit that we would be late and also "time is money, time is
money".
He left many of the international travellers behind at the pace he was
running, whipped those of us remaining through passport control and then
disappeared. We all scattered in different directions to find our departure
gates, where no planes were waiting and in my case only a lonely cleaning lady
could be seen, disconsolately mopping the floor. That left us all lost and each
alone somewhere in an empty airport. We had left South Africa. We had passed
through the looking glass.
However, this year is not the first time I have found the work of Lewis
Carroll useful for comparative purposes in Parliament. Wonderland arrived more
or less simultaneously with President Zuma.
For example, the procedures adopted to dispose of a perfectly good SABC
Board which however contained two or three Mbeki appointees reminded me (as I
wrote at the time) of the Queen of Hearts who insisted at the trial of the
Knave of Hearts who Stole Some Tarts that the sentence came first and then the
verdict, not that there had been an inquiry yet.
I would think that any impeachment proceedings now would follow the same
course. President Zuma, like the Cheshire Cat, is going to vanish quite slowly
until only the grin remains, with perhaps a pair of glasses intermittently
pushed up the nose.
By then, Julius Malema may be sitting roughly where Prince Buthelezi now
sits, wearing heaven knows what costume.
Now it is 13th April and I depart, having completed five
Parliaments. The question is not the one people keep asking me - why I am
leaving or how I can leave - but how I stayed for nearly a quarter of a century
when the work so consumes a person's life.
I have stayed because it has always been possible to get much and
sometimes almost all of what I argued, and where all else failed, to effect
damage control. It would have been nice to end on achieving my own two Private
Member's Constitutional Amendments on the JSC and the NPA, but the arguments
are out and have developed traction.
There are two approaches to opposition lawmaking work: making a noise
and making a difference. Sometimes you have to make some of the former in order
to achieve the latter, but mostly not. I have never been interested in work
that does not have effect, and consequently I have always had a sense of
agency.
My advice to an incoming caucus is that it is their job now to wake the
ANC up out of ideological Wonderland (the ANC had a worse ideas about public
and private enterprises when we started) and that making a noise will get you
no more than President Zuma quoting Macbeth to great effect: "it is sound
and fury, signifying nothing", he will say, then giggle, and bring the
House down.
But my real interest is the caucuses that went before, and I am so happy
and honoured to have some of our original people present at this farewell. I
think it is worth looking at the reasons why we were successful as lawmakers
over the years.
The first reason is the one which Dr Zach de Beer invoked: the long
obedience. You will know the quote from Nietsche: "there should be a long
obedience in the same direction, there thereby results, and has always resulted
in the long run, something which has made life worth living". I have Dr de
Beer's version of it, in his hand, in ink, somewhere among a quarter of a
century's papers.
All of us from the old days know what that means. Our convictions were
forged in adversity, because there was no profit and there were no rewards in being
liberal before we had the Constitution in place.
On the contrary, there was only trouble. But both the Constitution and
the policies produced as the fruits of the long obedience have stood the test
of time - to this day we draw on the work of Ken Andrew on issues ranging from
affirmative action to the youth wage subsidy, and on the work of Prof David
Welsh on, for example, an electoral system.
The second reason why we were successful over the years flows from the
first: we each knew exactly who we were, and that makes an effective MP.
The abiding formative influence for me on what a Parliamentary caucus
and what an MP should be was the DP caucus after the 1989 election, some forty
fiery souls. Everyone was a real MP, a full blown personality. The long
obedience was in the same direction, it allowed for different positions and
personalities. The battles were of epic proportions given Harry Schwartz's
presence.
I thought I was the only person who got on with Harry until I learnt
from my friend and relation Adv Izak Smuts, brother to Julia of the Claremont
committee, that he was the other one. Our number included Robin Carlisle,
Jasper Walsh, the late Tiaan van der Merwe, David Gant. And only Peter Soal and
Roger Burrows, with Sandy Slack supporting, could have kept the show on the
road so authoritatively and so elegantly.
We were, of course, the babies: Tony, Mike Ellis, James Selfe and I. But
after the 1994 election, we were three of the seven left, in the Assembly,
together with Colin Eglin and Ken Andrew, Douglas Gibson and Errol Moorcroft.
So what if were only seven? We had in the 1989 election provided the
tide on which FW changed history, and we were more effective than far larger
parties because the Constitution which we were then completing was itself the
fruit of the long obedience and we knew how to use it as sword and shield.
Also, the whole of the seven was more than the sum of its parts because
we sparked each other off because we were still real MPs, despite having come
in in 1994 on the list system.
The effects of an undiluted list system on political parties is just as
devastating to democracy as we always said it would be. The effects are
exacerbated by the modern practice of substituting marketing for the political
persuasion of voters.
Accountability for an MP should lie to conscience, country, Constitution
and constituency. Tony and Mike Ellis and I were perhaps the last of the real,
directly elected Assembly MPs, genuinely accountable to the constituencies
which elected us.
Tony and I won old Prog safe seats. They were difficult seats to account
to. His was Houghton, where I was given a terrible time because I believed in
affirmative action from the start. I still do. Mine was Groote Schuur, right
here.
I so appreciate the role which Peter Fischer has played in arranging
this farewell, and the choice of venue is indicative of the care with which he
has worked. It is also poignant and pleasing that the Rondebosch Councillor and
general constituency election leader Matthew Kempthorne is the son of my friend
and first constituency secretary Vicky Kempthorne. I have known Matthew since
he was a boy in our old Mowbray office and I am mightily encouraged by the
quality brought not just by him, but also our election candidate from
Rondebosch, Bronagh Casey, as well as their new Chairperson Tammy Evans.
But let me talk to the old people, if you will let me, and turn this
into the last report back meeting, also to the spirits of those departed, and
also to those personalities who endorsed me, like Morne du Plessis and the
friends who ran voting stations for me, like Jenny du Plessis. I think I
fulfilled the undertakings I made when I ran for office.
Campaigning then was a personal matter, not a scripted message. I
campaigned on a new liberal democratic Constitution, and it was my privilege to
be part of the creation of that Constitution from day the first to day the
last, alongside Colin Eglin and Ken Andrew, with Tony, too, playing a major
part.
If you will further allow me, I want to recall two things I said to the
electoral college, part constituency part DP, which way after midnight on the
relevant night in 1989 elected me over seven other candidates running against
the sitting safe seat MP.
I was reminded relatively recently by someone whose mother was on the
electoral college that I said I would be an MP until I was an old lady. That
promise too, I have fulfilled. The other thing I said, and which I think may
have influenced Colin Eglin to swing the vote my way, was that I saw sitting
before me a sea of white faces, and that we needed to change that in the DP
just as we needed to change South Africa.
Now tonight, the constituency to which I bid goodbye, is called Athlone
1. The Rondebosch ward and Claremont committee were assigned for some time to
other MPs under the present random allocation system, but were recently added
to half of the larger Athlone constituency which I shared for some years with
Sheikh Shahid Esau.
To the original Athlone, I say from the bottom of my heart, thank you
for taking me in. To Shehaam Sims, shukran, shukran, shukran. To Shahid,
shukran. To Magedien and his family, shukran. To the chairwomen then and now,
Bonita and Konieta, thank you and shukran. To Suzette Little, Zainu Waggie and
Anthea Green and Mark Kleinschmidt and Ruth Gordon, thank you and God bless.
It is really good to see how the new wards and the old committees have
integrated. Claremont over the years has often benefited from strong Jewish
membership and also leadership - to Grace Richman, we will always remember
Gerald.
If anyone wants to know why South Africa works, there it is: we are
Coloured and white, Jewish, Christian and Muslim. But I think we can say that
we live by the motto which our indispensable Constituency Operations Manager
Berenice Lawrence features at the bottom of her emails. Taken from George
Eliot, it asks: what do we live for if not to make life easier for each other?
Berrie, you are our compass in more than one way.
