Mbete banks on new dress rules to restore order
ANC speaker ’nostalgic’ for lost age of decorum
BALEKA Mbete misses her first stint as National Assembly Speaker, when MPs dressed properly, she says, and differences were resolved amicably.
She can hardly wait for parliament’s new rules regime, which is expected to ban overalls, berets and hard hats from the house when it is introduced in the next session.
In an interview this week, a nostalgic Mbete spoke of how much she enjoyed herself during her first tenure as speaker, between 2004 and September 2008.
Back then, she said, MPs generally behaved themselves with decorum.
Mbete succeeded Frene Ginwala as speaker in 2004, and stepped down in 2008 when she was appointed South Africa’s deputy president.
Her second stint as speaker has been characterised by a tumultuous relationship with opposition MPs — especially those from Julius Malema’s EFF and the DA — who accuse Mbete, who is also the ANC chairwoman, of being partisan.
Under Mbete, parliament has been dragged to court after an unprecedented move in which she ordered police to forcibly eject every EFF member.
Some EFF members were injured during the fracas.
Last month the High Court in Cape Town ruled that section 11 of the Powers, Privileges and Immunities of Parliament and Provincial Legislatures Act — which she had invoked when calling in the police — was constitutionally flawed.
This was in response to a successful DA challenge to the section.
But Mbete had her own interpretation of the court ruling. DRESSING UP: Speaker Baleka Mbete says the public is unhappy with MPs who come to parliament dressed in overalls, hard hats and berets
“The courts actually said members must desist from wanting to rely on courts to determine how another arm of state must run its business.
“The judges were here on the day of the state of the nation address. They had first-hand experience of how members can break rules deliberately and then rush to the courts,” said Mbete.
She strongly defended herself against criticism from the opposition, denying that there was any conflict of interest in her serving as the National Assembly’s presiding officer while still keeping her job as the ANC’s national chairwoman.
Mbete insisted that she was able to distinguish between her two roles, just as Western Cape premier Helen Zille had when she was still DA leader.
“When I go somewhere . . . in my capacity as the national chairperson of the ANC, that is a different . . . It’s just what it is, that’s the reality of politics. You come from a particular political party, political home, you go into a different space where you are supposed to play a specific role in that place,” Mbete said.
To Mbete, the problem with the current parliament is not that she is perceived as biased against the opposition, but that MPs — unlike in the past — are too partisan.
Reflecting on her first term as speaker, Mbete said MPs from across the political divide worked together to resolve differences then.
“You had an approach where senior members of parliament — I remember [former IFP MP] Koos van der Merwe was one of them — would come put their heads together with other people of that stature, of that same generation and understanding.
“I miss that. I think that we put party politics into everything at our peril because finally we serve a society. We serve South Africans, all of whom come from these communities, from these villages.”
Mbete said she was looking forward to the new rules regime, which will govern, among other things, how MPs dress in parliament.
The public, she said, was unhappy with MPs who come to parliament dressed in overalls, hard hats and berets.
“I remember a meeting with the head of the Shembe church and he raised this matter very sharply. And actually it makes you feel: ‘Wow, I didn’t realise people are so offended.’ ”
She said the EFF would have no choice but to comply with the new rules.
I think that we put party politics into everything at our peril
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