‘Castle Corner’ sets a low tone as MPs plumb new depths

Selectively deaf chairmanship and bullying take house into dismal territory over two days of ’debate’, writes Jan-Jan Joubert

PARLIAMENT plumbed new depths in debating standards this week when senior ANC MP Lulu Johnson called EFF MP Mbuyiseni Ndlozi a rapist.

No court has ever made a rape finding against Ndlozi. He has never been tried on such a charge. That did not stop Johnson.

At that moment, a line was crossed in the National Assembly. House chairwoman Grace Boroto almost visibly greyed. Her colleague, the highly regarded Thoko Didiza, slumped in her seat. Minister of Science and Technology Naledi Pandor, possibly the most accomplished parliamentarian, looked shocked and older. Clearly, she just did not want to be there any more.

Boroto did the sensible thing and adjourned the house as the presiding officers and the chief whips of the major parties met to sort out the mess.

After about 20 minutes, the bigwigs returned. Johnson had to apologise.

He was not the only one, his comment being but one milestone in the race to the bottom that has been parliamentary debating since last year’s election.

In this week’s debate, all the elements contributing to the general mess were present.

First and foremost, woeful and partisan chairmanship. Speaker Baleka Mbete caused the first trouble, on Tuesday, when, for reasons known only to herself, she broke with the convention of letting opposition parties state their views from the biggest to the smallest, with the ANC, as the party in power, speaking last. Chaos and delays ensued as every party sought to have the last word, and Mbete refused to admit that she had erred.

She and her fellow presiding officers (with the honourable exceptions of house chairwoman Didiza and house chairman Cedric Frolick, who chair very well) again stood repeatedly accused by the DA and EFF of being strict on the opposition while loath to rule against the ANC.

In this, presiding officers are, of course, not helped by the EFF, which pushes the boundaries and often resorts to juvenile and personal attacks on ANC members. EFF MPs aim to irritate. Were ANC MPs to react with adult restraint, the EFF would have less oxygen, but maybe that is too much to hope for.

Not that the ANC is above childish behaviour itself, especially in so-called Castle Corner, at an angle of 45º from the presiding officer, where the worst of the ANC backbenchers terrorise smaller opposition parties such as COPE, the United Democratic Movement and the African Christian Democratic Party, out of earshot of the chairman. Apparently no ANC whip holds sway there.

This week, Castle Corner had a new trick. Every time COPE’s Deidre Carter, whose voice is rather high-pitched, started a speech, ANC backbenchers heckled her with cat noises, to their own great amusement. No one was brought to book, despite repeated calls for this.

On Wednesday, senior ANC MP Mathole Motshekga referred to the opposition as snakes, despite a ruling that MPs may not be equated with animals. Boroto claimed she had not heard the slight (she must have been the only one), and said she would rule on the issue later.

EFF chief whip Floyd Shivambu immediately called Motshekga a snake and much more, and refused to withdraw the statements, demanding equal treatment with Motshekga.

Later, ANC whip Bhekizizwe Radebe claimed that DA MP Greg Krumbock read newspapers in the house rather than listen to African speakers. When the DA complained, the ANC-supporting presiding officer again claimed not to have heard the insult, and did not act.

In-between, COPE’s Willie Madisha imitated Pandor’s posh English accent and Defence Minister Nosiviwe MapisaNqakula stopped just short of calling Madisha drunk, which he was not.

Then the EFF’s Ndlozi referred to Johnson as a “young lion who has become a cat, purring from the backbenches”.

All of a sudden, Boroto was wide awake, her hearing miraculously restored. She implored Ndlozi to withdraw his statement. He refused, Johnson called him a rapist, and the session was shut down.

One could not but wonder how close we are to the day when it will no longer be an honour to serve in parliament

When Boroto returned, she at long last made Motshekga, Shivambu, Radebe, Ndlozi and Johnson withdraw their statements.

Parliamentarians do good work. In the midst of all the above, they passed the budgets without which the state cannot deliver services to the population.

And no one wants a dead boring parliament. In fact, the livelier tone of the current parliament has shifted the institution to its rightful place at the centre of public debate after years as a dour afterthought.

But sometimes too much of a good thing is actually not wonderful.

Somewhere in the excitement, decency, wit and — dare one say it — the concept of ubuntu have lost out to insults and nastiness.

Looking at the faces of some of the more accomplished MPs, one could not but wonder how close we are to the day when it will no longer be an honour to serve in parliament, when all the timewasting, pettiness and partisan chairing will become too much for decent people to waste their time with.

And one could not help but hope that from the chair, the whippery and every MP sitting in the soft seats we voted them into, there would be a little less finger-pointing and blame, and a bit more self-reflection on the honour to serve the democracy that so many heroes gave their lives to obtain.

So Many Questions will be back next week