Parliamentary politics: a circus or something big coming our way?

IN HIS BOOK, DIARY OF A BAD YEAR, JM Coetzee writes: ‘the main problem in the life of the state is the problem of succession: how to ensure power will be passed from one set of hands to the next without a contest of arms’. The ANC’s Baleka Mbete offered a vignette of how that challenge was never met when riot police were ordered to evict EFF members from parliament on November 13. All hell broke loose when other opposition parties also climbed into the fray by rushing the police. Fists flew. The ANC parliamentary caucus was willing to replace debate with force. Earlier that day, Minister of Small Business Lindiwe Zulu nearly got caught up in a brawl with an EFF MP Godrich Gardee. These are all signs the ANC is losing its moral high ground and its grip over parliament. Never has a majority party faced such a united challenge from a throng of ideological varied opposition parties. A debate over the Nkandla report (and later its ratification), the ‘misbehaviour’ of EFF members of parliament during Zuma’s presence a few months back, and the tactic of filibustering reveal a serious issue about parliament itself. The root cause of this sorry state is neither Mbete nor the EEF. The creeping malaise in the legislative arm of our democratic institution has been long in the making. It has its roots in the slow disappearance (or removal) of the thinking MP. ANC parliamentary politics has been turned into a mechanical process in which the thinking MP became a redundant factor as Luthuli House gained greater control over parliament and its MPs. Some insight on these turn of events can be draw from Ben Turok’s recent autobiography: With My Head Above the Parapet. Turok does not limit the crisis of quality representation and accountability to the Zuma period, when the deterioration reached its nadir. Reflecting on his life in parliament, Turok portrays the latter part of the Mbeki era as a period when parliament became less and less involved in policy-making. A large share of policy-making was increasingly being centralised in the executive arm, under the prerogative of the presidency. Thinking found its new centre in government, with the result that thinking MPs increasingly sought careers outside party politics and parliament. Caucuses and committees were less about policymaking than about running processes. Turok writes that in the early days, chairs of portfolio committees, parliamentary whips and other positions were filled through an elective process. The most knowledgeable, energetic and best defender of policy positions got the job. As the party gained more control over its MPs, posts were increasingly filled through ‘cadre deployment’. Silencing criticism or calls for transparency became a sort of habit that is now more of an entrenched tradition. This was most evident during the arms deal scrutiny under parliament’s Standing Committee for Public Accounts (SCOPA), which saw ANC MP Andrew Feinstein kicked out of parliament for refusing to
support the party line when he discovered that things were not savoury. The Mbeki era stances on HIV/AIDS and ‘Travelgate’ were early markers that the power and influence of MPs was to be watered-down. The executive and Luthuli House would call the shots. On controversial issues like the Nkandla report, MPs came out protecting the president by seeking to block a proper enquiry and interrogation of the issue. Orders came directly from Luthuli House on how to steam-roll the opposition. ANC MPs found themselves parroting the party line and defending the indefensible. The consequence of all this is that MP engagement within parliament, at least so far as the majority party is concerned, now varies considerably in quality, energy and effort. This backdrop explains some of the ANC’s inability to govern properly in parliament, and why thinking is losing ground to the use of force. The parliamentary art of dealing with diverse opinions, critical thinking and independence has fallen to lesser forms of leadership and organisation within the ANC. While the ANC denuded its own thinking capabilities, opposition parties faced no such limitations. They could raise controversial issues that required nuance and a tactical sense. The opposition has become more inventive, and is using a combination of real debate, free-thinking and spectacle to unnerve the ANC. Cohesion is not only lacking at the centre in government, it also missing from Luthuli House and parliament. This is one of the reasons Deputy President Ramaphosa had to step in to re-establish accord with opposition parties, after Speaker Baleka Mebete had lost her compass and could no longer hold authority over nor enjoy the respect of opposition MPs. Ramaphosa’s peace overtures caused consternation amongst ANC MPs as they went against the dominant, domineering grain. The fact is that our system was not designed with direct democracy in mind. Parliamentary representation is always a product of internal party machinations, because the mechanism of proportional representation is controlled by the party bosses. MPs are placed based on their position on the party list. Party organisational mechanisms can determine the tempo of the debate, what is said, how things are voted on, and who gets to sit on the bench. Party whips are in constant contact with Luthuli House, so there is a lot of second-guessing. Another problem infecting party politics within the entire National Assembly is the lack of transparency that prevails over party funding. Lack of oversight into party political funding brings an unsavoury element to politics because political parties are compromised by money patronage. This issue remains an ongoing debate. None of the parties is keen to open up for scrutiny and reform, since all of them benefit from the existing secrecy. Additionally, party list systems are open to abuse and manipulation by party elites. List systems can inadvertently lead to MPs becoming rubber stamps. Dominant parties are more prone to this, because they are more inclined to use their majority to muscle in on what MPs say and how legislation is passed. Several years back, the late Frederick Van Zyl Slabbert led an electoral task team that reviewed the electoral and parliamentary system. This resulted in a report that recommended that half of the 400 parliamentary seats come from direct representation and the rest through a party list system. This would have gone some way in ensuring more parliamentary independence and accountability. These recommendations were never acted upon. In effect, through party representation parliament remains a weaker version of direct democracy. To some extent, we citizens can rely on the power of our vote – during voting season – to signal our unhappiness. Thereafter, though, the party takes over and decides. In the recent parliamentary fracas, the EFF drew a clear line in the sand. The EFF has brought an element of spectacle to parliament that is resonating with other opposition parties and irking the ANC, which has no real mechanism to deal with delinquencies other than using the divisive authoritarian card. The EFF has brought street politics into the snobbish decorum of parliament, entirely unseating the notion of what parliamentary respect, dress code and purpose should be. The ANC’s strategy has been to hide behind the rules of parliamentary decorum, only to play the draconian card by seeking to silence, badger the opposition and then finally use the police when an EFF member, Reneilwe Mashabela, refused to retract her statement calling Jacob Zuma a thief. In the end the questions are: does parliament serve a useful role, and if so for whom, and can we improve the quality of parliamentary engagement? It would be a mistake to think that parliament is the only means available to exercise democratic control. At the same time we cannot dismiss its importance. As Robert Dahl points out in On Democracy, one of the key attributes of democratic governance is the ability of citizens to ‘control the agenda’ of government. One mechanism for this is parliament, which is supposed to be a free space of enlightened adjudication over different and complex policy priorities. Parliaments can only do so on behalf of their citizens if they are themselves a source of independent and rigorous information. This is the main purpose of parliamentary debates, enquiries and committee hearings. Low quality engagement and adjudication destroys enlightened adjudication and gives ministers and experts – whether by default or deliberately – the room to decide what is best for citizens. A weak parliament can be displaced by a betterresourced state machinery, which can in turn be captured by powerful organised groups in society. These weaknesses give elites incredible room to exercise their discretion over governance and policy matters. The elites include powerful ministers, the government bureaucracy, experts, business leaders and organisations, as well as other capable special interest groups within and outside of the country that usurp democratic control or political sovereignty. In every election, the power of these elites can be limited by upsets through electoral polls that force a rearrangement and realignment. But this can take a long time — as we have seen after twenty years of ANC dominance of various institutions that are supposed to foster democracy and oversight over policy making. Like the breakaway of NUMSA from COSATU, the current trends within parliament and outside may well herald new opportunities for realignments and stronger citizenship. The reinvention of parliament is a possibility, but these historic moments are not merely an entertaining spectacle; they must also to be captured by active citizenship.
Saliem Fakir is the Head of the Living Planet Unit at the World Wildlife Fund South Africa.