Pretoria - Parliament may be short of space in Cape Town, but a move to Pretoria is not imminent. This emerged from an engagement this week between Parliament’s presiding officers and senior journalists and editors in Joburg.
National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete said the fifth democratic Parliament was very different from the one prior to 1994 which she described as a “tiny space meant for a few South Africans”.
“We came with a different mandate and many more bodies to populate (Parliament). We are squeezed into that place… we need to address that issue,” she said on Tuesday.
Responding to a question on whether Parliament will move from Cape Town, Deputy Speaker Solomon Lechesa Tsenoli said it was a “big complex debate” and the issues of space had to be addressed in the meantime.
He said there was the reality of space but President Jacob Zuma had also raised concerns of the cost of seasonal travel between Cape Town and Pretoria.
Another headache was transporting MPs between the three villages where they stay in Cape Town and Parliament. Ideally, they should be able to walk to work, he said.
Referring to August 21 when she adjourned the sitting of the House during presidential question time after the Economic Freedom Fighters refused to leave, Mbete admitted “I lost it that day”.
“However to reduce the cause of what went on that day to the Speaker is to really get it wrong.”
Mbete said it was not her intention to “get rid of journalists” from the House during the disruption.
“We have no interest in hiding anything because in an open democracy like ours there is no point in doing that.
“You will only shoot yourself in the foot.”
Mbete said the recent disruptions and “drama” in Parliament had not affected the way it did its work.
“The drama is really for your eyes, which is only in the chamber. That is where the drama is confined because that’s where everybody will see what they are doing,” she said.
“Committees continue with their work. The colleagues from those red benches (the EFF) are there in all the committees in Parliament… Where a lot of the things they scream about in the House are actually discussed.”
The EFF said earlier on Tuesday they would go to court to challenge disciplinary charges against 20 MPs stemming from their heckling of Zuma on August 21 to repay state funds spent on his Nkandla home.
This is the second time the EFF has threatened legal action over the threat of expulsion arising from the party’s unprecedented protest in the National Assembly during presidential question time last month.
EFF MPs chanted “pay back the money” after EFF leader Julius Malema asked Zuma when he would heed Public Protector Thuli Madonsela’s recommendation that he reimburse the state for non-security upgrades done to his KwaZulu-Natal homestead.
They ignored a threat from Mbete to have them physically removed from the House and she adjourned the House with the remainder of Zuma’s questions unanswered.
National Council of Provinces chairwoman Thandi Modise said at Tuesday’s editors’ meeting that Parliament’s presiding officers were forced to be impartial, but were “not angels”.
“It doesn’t matter how annoying they (MPs) might be, they are representing a voice out there in the community that must find representation in the house,” she said.
“That voice, no matter how annoying it is to my person, I am forced to apply the rules equally to the members of all parties.”
She said she previously received a note from a member of the ruling party who said she needed to stop smiling and look stern.
“Sometimes you find yourself laughing and sometimes you find yourself annoyed. But when we are annoyed we are not supposed to show it.”
She said most of the points of order made to the two female presiding officers were possibly to intimidate them.
At the end of meeting Modise serenaded Mbete with a rendition of Happy Birthday ahead of her birthday on Wednesday.
Pretoria News and Sapa