Parliament - Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa has brokered a political process to end weeks of acrimony in Parliament, which culminated with riot police storming the House.
But the solutions will unfold only next year because the committee set up to work on the peace gets working next week, after Parliament has risen.
Political parties committed on Tuesday to solving Parliament’s image problem after a meeting at Tuynhuys chaired by Ramaphosa and attended by all but one of the parties represented in Parliament.
Commentators cautiously welcomed the move.
“It’s not something miraculous. It’s supposed to happen,” said political analyst Ebrahim Fakir. An end to the acrimony was welcomed, but measures should not “dampen” vigorous and robust debate.
Key to a lasting solution was ensuring that opposition parties felt trusted and accommodated in making their contribution to a multiparty constitutional democracy. If in the end parliamentary committees continued to work on majority numbers, as was clear in the parliamentary Nkandla ad hoc committee, there would still be problems.
“The hard knocks will be tested when the contentious issues come up again,” Fakir said.
Lawson Naidoo, executive secretary of the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution, hoped the presiding officers would endorse the outcome of Tuesday’s meeting. “The process of rebuilding trust between parties will not be easy, but a renewed commitment to our common constitutional vision provides the opportunity to strengthen this institution.”
After the meeting it was agreed to:
* Reaffirm the presiding officers’ responsibility to apply the rules consistently, fairly, without fear, favour or prejudice.
* Reject any attempt, in whatever form, to suppress debate or silence dissent, and to support substantive debate.
* Hold in abeyance any disciplinary steps, a move that effectively lets the EFF off the disciplinary hook, at least temporarily, over its “pay back the money” disruption of presidential question time on August 21.
* Restore Parliament as the institution where laws are made and the dignity of all South Africans is represented.
* Work together to create a climate to enable the president and ministers to come to Parliament to account.
Independent Media has confirmed it was UDM leader Bantu Holomisa who put forward a solution everyone felt they could support when he proposed a committee under Ramaphosa’s chairmanship be set up to find political solution. The deputy chairs are ANC chief whip Stone Sizani and DA parliamentary leader Mmusi Maimane.
The committee will start their work next week, although opposition parties must still agree on the names of the other three political party leaders on the committee.
Holomisa is likely to be one of them.
The parliamentary ANC’s commitment to the process is the second time in less than a week that Sizani has to take advantage of opposition initiatives to get the majority party out of a bruising debacle.
Last Thursday it was IFP MP Mkhuleko Hlengwa’s suggestion to refer Speaker Baleka Mbete’s controversial decision to limit the motion slot to another forum.
Ramaphosa was upbeat after the meeting: “Watch this space. What we want to do as leaders of our people in South Africa is to restore Parliament to its standing so that our people can look at all of us and say, yes, these people do represent us.”
Ramaphosa, as leader of government business, must be concerned with relations between the executive and national legislature. Questions also arise why the Parliamentary Oversight Authority, effectively an in-house policy and political structure, has failed to manage and resolve the bad blood.
Before taking the Speaker’s chair on Tuesday, Mbete said the presiding officers had been briefed on the meeting and all outstanding disciplinary matters would be suspended pending the committee’s work.
In what appeared to be a turnabout from the defence she gave on Friday for calling in the police, Mbete emphasised Parliament as the seat of vigorous, robust and even tough debate.
“What transpired in the House is not something we are proud of and we should all do our utmost to prevent a recurrence.”
Political Bureau