Johannesburg - The chaotic scenes in Parliament that saw MPs heckling and howling at one another are “an orchestrated machination by opposition parties to discredit and dislodge” the ANC from power through undemocratic means.
This was the assertion of ANC spokesman Zizi Kodwa as he laid into the DA and the EFF for their “unholy alliance” in conniving against the governing party.
In the latest broadside by Luthuli House against opposition parties, Kodwa said there was no basis for the calls for President Jacob Zuma to avail himself in Parliament so that he could account for the Nkandla scandal.
“The issue of Nkandla was a tool for campaigning and, therefore, having failed in the May 7 election, it was now taken to Parliament as a political battlefield,” Kodwa told The Star on Tuesday, following the ANC’s national working committee meeting on Monday.
“It’s an orchestrated agenda for this administration not to achieve the manifesto of the ANC through Parliament, and therefore, at the end of the term, say to our people, ‘you elected us overwhelmingly, but we haven’t been able to implement what we meant (to achieve).”
He reminded opposition parties that previous attempts to discredit “any formidable organisation with an impeccable history such as the ANC” had failed. Kodwa said the pandemonium in Parliament had nothing to do with Speaker Baleka Mbete’s failure to understand the rules and the constitution.
“Whether you are speaking about a motion (of no confidence) or impeachment and so on, you must understand it… on the basis of advancing a political agenda that failed, (and now wants to) dislodge Zuma and discredit the ANC. The overall strategy is to make Parliament ungovernable.”
Kodwa reiterated the ANC’s stance that it was in fact opposition parties that were failing to understand the rules of Parliament by heckling the president, among other acts of misconduct.
“That is why it’s almost a planned degeneration of Parliament, to make it ungovernable. You can minus Baleka and put anybody from the ANC, it (Parliament) will degenerate because the agenda is to unsettle the ANC and take over government.”
Kodwa admitted that the Nkandla scandal had become “a highly contested, hostile, hot potato” for the ANC, but said it was the attitude of opposition parties that Parliament had become a “very muddied, hostile environment” for Mbete.
He singled out EFF MP Reneilwe Mashabela, who called Zuma a “thief” for refusing to pay back the money unduly spent on his Nkandla home.
“Even rules of Parliament that generally are meant for normal people (are threatened when) they now have to deal with people who are abnormal. It’s not the first time that she (Mbete) runs Parliament. She ran Parliament before, with normal people who understand rules.
“For anybody to stand up in front of the podium and say somebody is a thief is a political statement deliberately made to discredit the leader,” Kodwa said.
The Star