Bring back the sting, Sir
PRESIDENT Cyril Ramaphosa, First of all, let me congratulate you for ascending to the highest position in the land and being ready to stand at the front of the line waiting for the “thuma mina” (send me) order from the nation. I am equally ready to answer that command. Only by working together will we be able to lift the country out of the morass it has sunk into over the past nine years.
How did that happen? Parliament failed to hold the executive and, more particularly, the president to account. Even though, at the end of March 2016, the Constitutional Court upbraided the National Assembly for its failure to hold president Jacob Zuma to account over the Nkandla matter, nothing happened. The matter was never debated in the National Assembly. This remains a serious omission.
Parliament, regrettably, has been at the receiving end of many court judgments because the majority party blatantly disregarded Section 42(3) of the constitution and showed a predisposition for sycophancy and obsequiousness. All the MPs who accepted that Zuma’s swimming pool was a firepool must feel stupid.
Section 42(3) states: “The National Assembly is elected to represent the people and to ensure government by the people under the constitution. It does this by choosing the president, by providing a national forum for public consideration of issues, by passing legislation and by scrutinising and overseeing executive action.”
Mr President, the problem started in the second Parliament when interpellations ended and questions had the sting of scrutiny removed. The executive and president Thabo Mbeki began to bridle at the fact that MPs were making question time uncomfortable for him and his ministers. Until then the public gallery used to be packed and question time was genuine interrogation time with tension aplenty. As soon as the ANC made question time a dull affair, too many oral questions were no longer answered.
Furthermore, President Zuma waffled and giggled his way through question time. The exerciser of scrutiny was wilfully and unconstitutionally tamed and rendered almost useless.
If you want to answer the call of “thuma mina”, Mr President, begin by honouring the constitution you had a hand in formulating. You can do this by reverting to the practice of the Mandela era and reintroduce interpellations and the kind of sharp questioning of ministers allowed in the first Parliament. Permit some real stinging of the executive and yourself in Parliament to get genuine accountability. No rigour means no vigour.