Thami ka Plaatjie says its the quality of politicians’ debates that matter, not the frivolous and obnoxious regard they have for one another.
Johannesburg - The EFF billed the opening of Parliament last Thursday as an occasion for the display of political fireworks where drama was going to be the order of the day. Alas, South Africans were instead treated to a false alarm and an anti-climax.
Contrary to their professed plans of disruption, Parliament, on the contrary, experienced a brief comical sideshow or interlude which soon paved the way to the real serious business of the day.
The etymology of the word parliament is derived from a French phrase parler which means to speak, hence reference to a parley. Some people in this house felt they needed to speak with their feet or by walking out.
We meet as various political parties in Parliament not because we agree on every item for discussion, but we are all enjoined by duty entrusted upon us by the people who have placed us here to hear and listen to one another.
We don’t have to love one another but we have to give each other a hearing. We don’t have to agree with each other but we must agree to listen so as to speak or respond. It is the business of talking and engagement that underpins what we do. It is not the business of walking away and behaving like some juvenile stormtroopers.
South Africans must measure us by the quality of our debates and not by the frivolous and obnoxious regard we have for one another. They must see in this Parliament the true and highest embodiment of what they aspire to become. Dare we give them the impression we are engaged in a senseless shebeen brawl which makes us descend to lavatorial levels.
The EFF members’ grandstanding and walkout represent their small-minded appreciation of the right that they have earned to be in this august house and represent their constituency. To have accepted to stand for national elections and having waged a contest to have a seat in Parliament is something the EFF may not have understood as the party would be content with being on the sideshow of Parliament singing re-mixed ANC songs. We are patient to allow the EFF time to settle in and appreciate the full import of this institution.
The EFF obliquely accuses the ANC of deviationism by adopting the Freedom Charter and alludes to the internal dissension that such a decision occasioned. Within the same paragraph the party accused the ANC of failure to live up to the dictates, import and stipulations of the Freedom Charter as Julius Malema narrated clause by clause.
In other words, the ANC should not have adopted the Freedom Charter but once it had, it was not loyal to the Charter. What a contradiction!
Malema does not tell South Africans what his organisation will do for them save to lament about the ANC’s historic documents. I discern a measure of nostalgia in his voice. I suspect he must have skipped many political classes while he was in the ANC.
Honourable Malema cites a long catalogue of what he understood to be the stance of the ANC government in respect of putting a maximum target to land ownership. His distorted understanding misleads him to lumping up the sizes of townships from Langa to Marikana in a desperate effort to suggest the government desires that each farmer should own up to 12 000 hectares. I hope he doesn’t suffer from a condition opticians call student myopia.
We were not affected by the staged walkout based on the provocation of the Speaker, but were saddened by it. We were not shaken by theatrics and histrionics but found them rather comical. We thought perhaps he was suffering from the unforgiving heat of Cape Town in those red overalls, given the high temperature of that day. Surely, they failed to check the weather report to dress appropriately.
As for the DA, we reserve and give out our cynicism at their MPs’ strange conduct that defies their very culture and history. They are trying so hard to the point of being desperate to show that they, too, can be “revolutionary”.
The predecessors of the DA never staged a walkout even during the many years of apartheid rule where successive generations of oppressive laws were enacted that confined people like Mmusi Maimane and his parents to the conditions of poverty in the African townships.
Never did it occur to them to walk out and turn their backs on that racist Parliament. They sat in the very chairs like Egyptian mummies biting their nails and licking their lips.
On the contrary, in dark colours of grief, the DA had the audacity to file out of the House like unweaned calves in a hurry to suck milk from their alpha female mother. With sunken shoulders and anguished visages, they were at pains to look radical, let alone revolutionary. I suggest they read Mandla Langa’s book, The Lost Colours of the Chameleon.
* Ka Plaatjie is adviser to Human Settlements Minister Lindiwe Sisulu and ANC head of research.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media
The Sunday Independent