Not even the serious topic of violence against women and children could keep MPs from each other’s throats on Friday after a gruelling week of confrontation and sittings that ran deep into the night.
National Assembly Deputy Speaker Lechesa Tsenoli echoed sentiments expressed by many ordinary citizens when he declared MPs were “a disgrace” after the debate descended into sexist commentary, shouting and pulling of faces.
“You really are a disgrace, and it is despicable of you to be behaving like that,” Tsenoli told MPs.
“You are a disgrace and completely out of order.”
DA chief whip John Steenhuisen was among MPs who angered Tsenoli, after he had risen 10 minutes earlier on a point of order to object to a DA MP being called a “finalist of Miss South Africa”.
He also claimed Minister for Women in the Presidency Susan Shabangu had shouted, “You are mad”, which she denied.
Tsenoli exploded after shouting broke out on all sides and a complaint that one MP had been pulling a face and sticking out her tongue.
“I now instruct you to put your hands down. You are out of order, all of you… This is an important debate… the way you are conducting yourselves is unbecoming… I told you before that your screaming match is out of order.”
Bickering and spurious points of order marked the early stages of the debate after DA Gauteng representative Jacques Julius accused Shabangu of not caring about violence against women and children.
Referring to the launch of plans for the 16 Days campaign in Ekurhuleni earlier this month, where Shabangu said men should be “the protectors of families” and appeared to agree with views expressed’, including that feminism was not African and that women should be submissive to their husbands, Julius said Shabangu should apologise.
Shabangu said in her speech yesterday that since women were the majority, the ring-fencing of a budget to support women entrepreneurs should be questioned when “those who are in the minority get the bigger (slice of) cake”.
“We as women must qualify for the bigger cake because we are in the majority.” It was also time to develop a programme to address violence against women that went beyond just the 16 Days campaign, “which tends to be an event of 16 days (and) after that, so what?”
“We need a programme which talks to the country on a 365 (day) basis in making sure the space is free and safer for all of us, that fathers become fathers, not monsters, uncles become protectors of children instead of kids running away from their uncles because they have turned into a threat to their own blood,” Shabangu said.
The fractious joint sitting of the National Assembly and National Council of Provinces followed a tense night on Thursday, when a stand-off between the ANC and opposition parties over disciplinary measures against EFF MPs for their role in the “pay back the money” incident of August 21 threatened to unravel a truce brokered by Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa.
The parties agreed to meet Ramaphosa again on Monday and defer the EFF matter to next week.
- Pretoria News Weekend