Johannesburg - MPs on Parliament’s agriculture oversight committee showed on Tuesday they wouldn’t be cowed.
Nor do they suffer from a herd mentality, but one of them did moo like a prize heifer.
He may be in danger of developing mad cow disease, according to a colleague.
He doesn’t love Agriculture Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson, but he blushed when called on to declare his feelings.
The bovine member of Parliament was the DA’s Pieter van Dalen, who voiced his approval of a point made by his fellow DA member, Annette Steyn, with a low, rumbling “Hmmmm”.
“I thought that was a cow,” a startled Mlungisi Johnson, chairman of the committee, remarked.
“At least he’s got some agricultural skills,” Steyn shot back, referring to the point she had been making about the need for these.
“We must just watch out for mad cow disease here.”
Johnson was determined to end the heated meeting on a kinder note.
Though he agreed with MPs that Joemat-Pettersson should be told to appear before them this morning, he prefaced the instruction with warmer words.
“Tell the minister, firstly, we love her.
“You know that. We do,” he told officials from her department.
One MP wanted to know if the unfortunate Van Dalen also loved the minister.
“Go on, just say it. I’m sure you can,” Johnson urged.
But the DA MP would not be so easily milked.
He blushed, but pulled a face like a mad cow.
Political Bureau