To be or not to be in da House: a game to be EFFing well played

ACT I, season five: The Game of Drones. Or maybe not. If this week’s first sitting of the fifth democratic Parliament was anything to go by, we should all hang on to our (hard) hats. Or berets, as the case may be. There are some new faces in the cast and they’re anything but dull characters.

From sensation magnet Julius Malema, Cat in the Hat (and disgraced former police commissioner) Bheki Cele, to steely ex-prosecutor Glynnis Breytenbach, the scene is set for a Parliament that may at last grab the imagination of citizens.

Like any good premiere, the first sitting opened teasing plotlines that will be developed in the fullness of time.

First there was the parliamentary debut of the Economic Freedom Fighters, all got up like extras from Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.

Commander- in- chief Julius Malema has a genius for the organic metaphor, having previously turned up at a tropical island wedding in the guise of a human aubergine.

But it remains to be seen whether his agricultural approach to debate will find purchase in the fusty chambers of Parliament, which is anything but a revolutionary House.

The rules are designed to sterilise the visceral rhetoric on which Malema thrives and there will be only so many times he can get him- self thrown out before the media and public switch off.

Equally, the symbolic force of the red overalls and domestic workers’ outfits will soon be spent.

Headlines swarm around Malema wherever he goes and he is savvy enough to take the fight to the streets, should he find himself muted inside the parliamentary precinct, but he will have to be careful not to exhaust his audience with puerile attention-seeking.

This is where a strategic appreciation of arcane parliamentary convention can be worth a thousand radical slogans.

Contrasting with the EFF’s blunt force was the DA’s wily procedural finesse, first forcing a vote on the position of Speaker to make its objection to ANC candidate Baleka Mbete (tediously, it must be said) plain and then putting Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng on the spot on the question of Jacob Zuma’s fitness for the office of president.

Neither gambit had the faintest hope of success, but the DA would have known this.

The party has learnt from its decades in opposition to exploit the rules to its advantage, catching the majority party off balance or, at a minimum, putting its stamp on proceedings that would otherwise have coasted to a foregone conclusion.

It can seem petty at times, like when the party saps the quorum (the minimum number required) on votes dear to the ANC’s heart by melting from the chamber, but it is effective, leaving the governing party red-faced over the poor attendance of some of its MPs.

With a reduced majority in this Parliament, returning ANC chief whip Stone Sizani, humbled a few times in this manner, will have to keep a sharp eye on his troops.

DA crown prince Mmusi Maimane, another first-time MP, will have to brush up fast on his parliamentary fencing technique if he is to carry the party’s standard as Leader of the Opposition, for which he is now the odds-on favourite.

Should he win the crown he will hear immediately the conspiratorial whispering of those in his own party who believe he is there only by dint of party leader Helen Zille’s backing.

The fate of his predecessor, Lindiwe Mazibuko, might give him reason to cast anxious glances over his shoulder.

The value of experience was also on display when FF+ MP Corne Mulder raised a technicality in the rules that suggested the EFF MPs were obliged to cast a vote for the position of Speaker – which they had sullenly resisted.

Mulder was crisply overruled by Justice Mogoeng, who explained the word “must” as it applied to the obligation to vote was to be interpreted in the circumstances as “may”.

Having lost the argument, Mulder was quick to offer a counter Malema must have envied, given the EFF leader’s run-in with Sars, suggesting that he hoped this interpretation would also apply to the obligation to pay taxes.

But, for all these cheerful antics, the ANC was always going to have the last laugh, armed as it is with the endorsement of the overwhelming majority.

Even the spectre of the Nkandla furore making an unwelcome return to the scene could not dent the party’s self-assurance, or that of its president, who got a lusty send-off from its MPs after being confirmed for another term as head of state.

Opposition schemes may amount to “a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing”, as Zuma is wont to say, after Shakespeare, but an intriguing tale, full of treachery and unexpected twists, it is bound to be. Let the game begin.

craig.dodds@inl.co.za