Nkosikhulule Nyembezi
Cape Town - Sometimes the best way that the Cabinet and parliamentarians can help is simply to get out of the way, to do less or better, or simply not do anything at all.
Having refused to get out of the course of the truth, President Cyril Ramaphosa’s stoic silence and steadfast refusal to reveal details of the so-called ‘Farmgate’ scandal, was as deafening as the chaos that erupted during last Thursday’s parliamentary sitting on his department’s budget vote.
Admittedly, no one can question the commitment of the Cabinet and Parliament to doing nothing much at all, given how strikingly little our elected public representatives have achieved thus far.
Just consider how alarmingly non-existent their ideas for tackling various crises seem. Despite their best efforts to look busy – now more than ever – politicians haven’t been.
Yet the country has rolled on after chaotic scenes, including reactions to Ramaphosa’s suspension of the Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane pending an investigation into her fitness to hold office.
She is challenging it in court. One inference is that real power has increasingly migrated away from the Union Buildings and Parliament. The incumbents may vacate office if they hesitate to remove corrupt individuals from public office.
The government spends vast sums of money away from the committee rooms and chambers where politicians make decisions about making laws and passing budgets. Regrettably, often ineffectively and frequently scandalously. From Covid cronyism to the state, they quietly squander multibillion contracts and surreptitiously acquire influence.
After missing the June 10 deadline to deliver an Electoral Amendment Bill, Parliament’s Home Affairs Committee issued a statement last week promising to comply with the Constitutional Court’s extension until November.
The Bill seeks to allow independent candidates to stand for election at national and provincial levels and thereby help South Africans to get political parties out of the way, to do less harm to the people or better for our democracy.
The government appears mainly engaged in theatre. Take last week’s report that the Treasury had still not received any properly supported requests from provincial and municipal governments for some of the R1bn immediately available in various grants. It has been nearly two months since the devastating floods hit KwaZulu-Natal, the Eastern Cape and North West provinces.
Also, the report that the 10.6m Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant applicants have not yet received their R350 payments for April and May due to the decision by the Department of Social Development to amend the means test for the grant.
Those making arch comments about government inefficiencies have been attacked as being way off the mark by ministers and parliamentarians whose political parties do not comply with the Political Party Funding Act.
The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) issued the party funding’s fourth-quarter Disclosure Report, covering all qualifying donations declared by political parties for the three months – between January and March 2022. Only the ANC and DA have made declarations, which raises questions about the lack of transparency on political party funding in South Africa.
All this is happening amid the ANC’s failure to muster enough support for the re-appointment of Glen Mashinini as commissioner of the IEC after the DA, EFF, FF Plus and ACDP all objected to his appointment when the National Assembly was considering the matter.
The impact of inefficiencies and incoherent leadership when dealing with time-sensitive issues is enormous.
To best understand, consider the National Assembly debate on Parliament’s budget for the 2022/23 financial year in which several politicians expressed concern about how Parliament is conducting its oversight and legislative work, and the impact of budget cuts on these constitutionally-mandated tasks.
While opposition MPs want to deal with the state capture commission reports and exercise oversight of the executive, the ANC seems in no hurry to deal with these issues as Parliament’s budget for legislation and oversight is R58m short.
The Cabinet and Parliament resemble little more than deranged front-of-house figures – radiating the mad cheerful friendliness of restaurant head waiters assuring diners that the kitchen is not on fire, even though they can see the smoke belching out of the door.
Is it any wonder that more and more people are sucked into conspiracism to explain it?
I enjoyed the odd comment by one political analyst during the presidency’s budget vote who concluded there must be a conspiracy, or some individuals more powerful controlling political parties in Parliament behind the scenes because of their out-of-touch approach to enforcing accountability.
Well now. It’s a yes and no regarding the usefulness of last week’s chaos in Parliament. But were Statistics SA to pose the time worn question “who runs South Africa?” to its survey respondents, we would imagine the answer “the government” would be in danger of slipping down the rankings.
Some might say the ANC factions are doing so on a rotational basis, and some might say the White monopoly capital.
The government appears to be the last entity to know that the eye-watering national and household debt that engulfs the decision-making environment they operate in, is arguably an overall driver-down of public trust.
The government is losing supporters fast despite Statistics SA’s latest report that South Africa’s economy grew stronger than expected in the first quarter of 2022, with real GDP growing by 1.9% from the previous quarter. How can they not know this when the informal economy has long overtaken the formal economy as the primary source of job creation? How can they not care to know it? How long before voter support is further switched away from political parties?
Either way, none of the big or small stuff ever gets fixed by political parties, and the way out is getting more complicated. The countdown for independent public representatives continues.
If our government were a film, I would leave the cinema, as it is an unpleasant and unrealistic experience not worth watching.
But looking on the bright side, I keep telling myself that if I stay to the end, the Union Buildings and Parliament actors will play ‘Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika’.
Nyembezi is a policy analyst and human rights activist
Cape Times