PARLY POOPERS
The year MPs took off the gloves
PARLIAMENT sat for the last time this year on Thursday. It has been a significant and dramatic year in the National Assembly. President Jacob Zuma’s first five-year administration was brought to a close and with the election of South Africa’s fifth parliament came not just a new administrative term for the ANC but an emboldened opposition at the polls, led by the DA and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF).
With that, parliament itself would become the subject of debate, from the president’s question time through to the role of the speaker and the conduct of the opposition.
There were protests, police, filibustering and a range of unprecedented new developments as the public’s attention became increasingly fixated on each new sitting.
Amid all the drama, there were highlights and lowlights. Some of the more significant events include:
Most contentious issue
The ANC and the DA would begin the term by devoting themselves entirely to unemployment and their respective proposals to deliver six million new jobs. But it was the rules and regulations governing parliamentary business that would move front and centre, and unemployment would be quickly forgotten. The biggest debate in parliament is now parliament itself. From the role of the speaker to president’s question time, the institution at the heart
of South Africa’s democracy has become a metaphor on both sides of the House for the nature of that democracy.
The whitest wash
The ad hoc committee on Nkandla, ostensibly designed to consider the report of the public protector and the Special Investigating Unit, was denuded of much of its credibility when the opposition abandoned it. Its argument, presented in a minority report, was that the committee should call Zuma himself as a witness. But the ANC was of the view that not only was this unnecessary but that the recommendations made by the public protector were not binding. The ANC duly shifted responsibility for any repercus-
sions to the cabinet and voted through the report using its majority.
Forgotten legislation
Amid all the drama, the Protection of State Information Bill, once the subject of intense national debate itself, has quietly slipped off the radar. It has shuffled between the president and National Assembly more than once as it was approved, then returned for reconsideration. Its future is unclear.
The phrase that pays
The EFF would announce its arrival in a heated exchange between its leader, Julius Malema, and Zuma during president’s question time in August. Using the recommendation made in the public protector’s report on Nkandla, the EFF would begin chanting “Pay back the money”, disrupting formal proceedings and preventing the president from replying, until the speaker eventually called in the police to remove the EFF from the House. But by that time the phrase had set social media on fire and the next day it would dominate newspaper headlines nationwide.
A house of charades
Without fail, every time the former minister of defence, Lindiwe Sisulu, appears or speaks in parliament, DA defence shadow minister David Maynier stretches out both arms to mimic an aircraft. It is a reference to the 203 chartered flights, at a cost of R11-million, that the minister undertook while in that office, an issue
Maynier has made a personal crusade. The gesture has spawned a new trend in the House, with the opposition employing a range of gestures for everything from nail painting to spy satellites.
The disintegration of debate
The EFF’s Floyd Shivambu and Sisulu resorted, at different times, to flipping the middle finger at their opposite benches, a suitable metaphor perhaps for the degree to which debate in the House often deteriorated to little more than malicious namecalling.
Leading by dividing
As the leader of government business, Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa took it upon himself to solve the impasse between opposition parties, parliament and the executive by convening a meeting between all parties. But because he had no mandate or authority to discuss parliamentary rules and protocol — that being the speaker’s domain — the resultant agreement quickly collapsed. With it, Ramaphosa alienated himself not just from the opposition but from part of his own caucus, which, in siding with the speaker, took offence at his attempts to facilitate a solution.
Fight club
From a spectacle point of view, the session of the year, for all the wrong reasons, concerned the riot police being called into the House as the opposition filibustered and protested against the ad hoc committee’s report on Nkandla. There was a bruising and nasty exchange between opposition MPs and the security forces, all shielded from public scrutiny as the parliamentary cameras conveniently went dead. This might well have been parliament’s
SA watches, waiting for someone step up and fill the void with direction and purpose
lowest point, not just of the year but the past 20 years. Nevertheless, it had the nation fixated.
The great escape
Agang SA, once heralded as a bright prospect on the parlia- mentary horizon, has, after the election, collapsed in on itself. With the only two Agang MPs at war with one another, the DA is counting its blessings.
Much of the turmoil has been attributed to Mamphela Ramphele, who formed the party only to abandon it.
Yet there was a moment when she might well have been leading the DA’s benches in the House as Agang and the DA proposed a merger, only for that too — like so many other collaborations this year — to fall apart.
Leadership vacuum
It has been a telling year for all leaders in parliament.
Malema made an impact disproportionately bigger than the 6% his party won in the election but was then absent from the House for more than a month.
Mmusi Maimane, following the EFF’s lead, has developed a vitriolic style far grander than former DA leader Tony Leon ever produced.
Zuma appears to have abandoned parliament altogether, with the DA using social media to ask: “Where is Jacob Zuma?”
Ramaphosa has divided more than he has united and Speaker Baleka Mbete remains under siege on all fronts, her impartiality under constant scrutiny.
Meanwhile, South Africa watches, waiting for someone step up and fill the void with direction and purpose.