SONA – Super-Outrageous-Not-Acceptable
Terence Pillay unpacks the circus that was this year’s State of the Nation Address.
The State of the Nation address is meant to be a message from the president to tell us what successes we achieved and what the plans are until the next state of the nation address. It’s really supposed to be a message of inspiration for the nation and everyone does it the world over.
But clearly this fracas the played out in parliament last week is actually the real state of our nation. It reflects the thought of most South Africans. For one, we have what many perceive to be an illegitimate president who is not recognised by opposition parties as a legitimate leader of even the ruling party never mind the country. And so they don’t want to hear from him.
So the EFF seemed to be the most vocal about this, making a huge noise and getting thrown out of parliament. I have to say though, the EFF were completely out of line in this instance. They literally took off their helmets and bashed people. But their behaviour was totally predictable and that is exactly what they wanted – they wanted to be physically removed from parliament. They wanted to make a statement about the legitimacy of that place.
But the fact is: whatever you may think of the ANC, or whatever you may think of Jacob Zuma, he is still the president. There was a vote of no confidence tabled in parliament by the opposition party and the majority in parliament, and the fact that that most of them were ANC members is irrelevant, said they were not voting in favour of that motion. And so as it stands, however screwed up you may think it to be, he is still the president of the country. So you cannot deny him the platform to deliver his speech, despite what you may think of that speech or whatever you may think of him.
Until such time that the majority in parliament accept that he should be removed, and go though whatever legal process to have this done, in a democratic society you have to accept it. Let’s flip it around and say that the opposition was a right wing fundamentalist group of misogynists that believed that women were not allowed to hold any public office and they should all stay at home and have babies; a completely irrational and ridiculous constitution. Just because the majority holds a rational view, doesn’t mean the opposition should not be heard. To protect democracy should be the point. The fact that the president doesn’t care about anything that happens or that his party doesn’t accept any recommendations made by Chapter 9 institutions or the Constitutional Court, means that the whole process is illegitimate and unconstitutional.
So forget about the content, just the principle of allowing somebody to speak is enshrined in the freedom of expression part of our constitution. What they should have done is allow him to speak and then rebutted what he had to say. They would have an opportunity in terms of the parliamentary process to have a debate on the SONA. And in this forum, every member of that parliament is entitled to stand up and say, “In your state of the nation address, you said this and I disagree for these reasons. For example, you’re claiming seven thousand new work opportunities, but the facts state otherwise!”
The violent behaviour in parliament was completely unacceptable. Is that how we resolve conflict in this country? We are seeing that in all other facets of life here; we’ve seen it spill over into the fees protests, and service delivery protests. So it’s become the default position in terms of how we resolve conflict and differences of opinion; the person who shouts the loudest wins, the idea of might is right. But is this really how we want to deal with things?
The speaker and the chairman of the national council of provinces asked for the EFF to be removed from parliament and perhaps we should be questioning this decision in the first place. But if they have made this ruling already, the EFF should have used the parliamentary process to challenge the ruling.
The EFF was seen as the rabble being dragged out and manhandled then you have the DA who set themselves up as the composed and calm party that chose to walk out instead of being kicked out. At the end of the day, the EFF is a product of the country’s governance. They represent the general dissatisfaction and unhappiness with corruption and lack of service delivery and core issues like those of land.
The DA of course walked out because of the unconstitutional presence of the military at the SONA. For me it smacked of the securitisation of the state. So the president felt under threat and wanted to protect his domain by beefing up security and unfortunately this is not a good sign. It means that the more you become securitised the more you don’t want to deal with the democratic process.
Then of course there Baleka Mbete. My problem with her is that she’s partisan and is not an objective speaker. Neither is Thandi Modise, the chairman of the national council of provinces, so you can’t make decisions in parliament on the basis of party politics if you’re in that position. You can’t reject things simply because it comes from a member of an opposition party.
I know a lot of commentary on social media and in the news has been that the world has watched this and South Africa is once again in the spotlight, but quite frankly there are seven billion people in the world and I doubt that very many more than the people who have an interest or family in South Africa really care about out state of the nation address. The SONA is like a boil on the tip of Africa and seriously, you can just lance it and will be gone!
The fact is as a country, we’ve got an exemplary constitution and in many ways we have demonstrated a commendable transition from a totalitarian, oppressive form of government to one that is supposed to be the antithesis of that; corruption, lack of service delivery and poor education aside – there are many things that we have done quite well. We haven’t had complete civil war, for example and we’re not doing as well as we can, but we’re not a completely lost cause. The fact that we can still have local government elections where the ruling party can lose significant seats has got to say something about the process and the democracy that we live in.
But clearly this fracas the played out in parliament last week is actually the real state of our nation. It reflects the thought of most South Africans. For one, we have what many perceive to be an illegitimate president who is not recognised by opposition parties as a legitimate leader of even the ruling party never mind the country. And so they don’t want to hear from him.
So the EFF seemed to be the most vocal about this, making a huge noise and getting thrown out of parliament. I have to say though, the EFF were completely out of line in this instance. They literally took off their helmets and bashed people. But their behaviour was totally predictable and that is exactly what they wanted – they wanted to be physically removed from parliament. They wanted to make a statement about the legitimacy of that place.
But the fact is: whatever you may think of the ANC, or whatever you may think of Jacob Zuma, he is still the president. There was a vote of no confidence tabled in parliament by the opposition party and the majority in parliament, and the fact that that most of them were ANC members is irrelevant, said they were not voting in favour of that motion. And so as it stands, however screwed up you may think it to be, he is still the president of the country. So you cannot deny him the platform to deliver his speech, despite what you may think of that speech or whatever you may think of him.
Until such time that the majority in parliament accept that he should be removed, and go though whatever legal process to have this done, in a democratic society you have to accept it. Let’s flip it around and say that the opposition was a right wing fundamentalist group of misogynists that believed that women were not allowed to hold any public office and they should all stay at home and have babies; a completely irrational and ridiculous constitution. Just because the majority holds a rational view, doesn’t mean the opposition should not be heard. To protect democracy should be the point. The fact that the president doesn’t care about anything that happens or that his party doesn’t accept any recommendations made by Chapter 9 institutions or the Constitutional Court, means that the whole process is illegitimate and unconstitutional.
So forget about the content, just the principle of allowing somebody to speak is enshrined in the freedom of expression part of our constitution. What they should have done is allow him to speak and then rebutted what he had to say. They would have an opportunity in terms of the parliamentary process to have a debate on the SONA. And in this forum, every member of that parliament is entitled to stand up and say, “In your state of the nation address, you said this and I disagree for these reasons. For example, you’re claiming seven thousand new work opportunities, but the facts state otherwise!”
The violent behaviour in parliament was completely unacceptable. Is that how we resolve conflict in this country? We are seeing that in all other facets of life here; we’ve seen it spill over into the fees protests, and service delivery protests. So it’s become the default position in terms of how we resolve conflict and differences of opinion; the person who shouts the loudest wins, the idea of might is right. But is this really how we want to deal with things?
The speaker and the chairman of the national council of provinces asked for the EFF to be removed from parliament and perhaps we should be questioning this decision in the first place. But if they have made this ruling already, the EFF should have used the parliamentary process to challenge the ruling.
The EFF was seen as the rabble being dragged out and manhandled then you have the DA who set themselves up as the composed and calm party that chose to walk out instead of being kicked out. At the end of the day, the EFF is a product of the country’s governance. They represent the general dissatisfaction and unhappiness with corruption and lack of service delivery and core issues like those of land.
The DA of course walked out because of the unconstitutional presence of the military at the SONA. For me it smacked of the securitisation of the state. So the president felt under threat and wanted to protect his domain by beefing up security and unfortunately this is not a good sign. It means that the more you become securitised the more you don’t want to deal with the democratic process.
Then of course there Baleka Mbete. My problem with her is that she’s partisan and is not an objective speaker. Neither is Thandi Modise, the chairman of the national council of provinces, so you can’t make decisions in parliament on the basis of party politics if you’re in that position. You can’t reject things simply because it comes from a member of an opposition party.
I know a lot of commentary on social media and in the news has been that the world has watched this and South Africa is once again in the spotlight, but quite frankly there are seven billion people in the world and I doubt that very many more than the people who have an interest or family in South Africa really care about out state of the nation address. The SONA is like a boil on the tip of Africa and seriously, you can just lance it and will be gone!
The fact is as a country, we’ve got an exemplary constitution and in many ways we have demonstrated a commendable transition from a totalitarian, oppressive form of government to one that is supposed to be the antithesis of that; corruption, lack of service delivery and poor education aside – there are many things that we have done quite well. We haven’t had complete civil war, for example and we’re not doing as well as we can, but we’re not a completely lost cause. The fact that we can still have local government elections where the ruling party can lose significant seats has got to say something about the process and the democracy that we live in.
You can email Terence Pillay at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter: @terencepillay1 and engage with him there.