The quality of the people we sent to parliament after the elections didn’t take long to emerge, given how strongly they chose to label each other when presented with an opportunity to debate.
True to form, our politicians added bits of charm and chutzpah while at each other’s throats. It is one of the odd but funny things about our country that our parliamentarians are often more entertaining than, well, our artists.
The hilarity of the conversations bordered on the ridiculous and sometimes appeared to detract from the importance of the issues. Take the exchange between the EFF’s Mbuyiseni Ndlozi and Gayton McKenzie of the PA.
Ndlozi made an apt point about the importance of ministers preparing their parliamentary inputs, using research to elevate discourse. But McKenzie klapped back: “You always talk about education Honourable Ndlozi. Your peers are delivering papers while you are (an) ice boy here, being sent around, you must not come for me.” Social media lapped it up.
Ndlozi also used Steenhuisen’s input to the president’s opening of parliament to remind him of his lack of qualification. “I wanted respectfully to address the honourable member [Steenhuisen] with his rightful title as a matriculant, seeing there is confusion of titles today. This is a judge [referring to impeached former Western Cape judge president turned MK Party MP John Hlophe] and this is a matriculant,” Ndlozi said with a smirk.
Steenhuisen hit back: “The grannies, pensioners and stokvels who had their money stolen from VBS Mutual Bank do not sleep better knowing the people who stole from them have doctorates and master's degrees.” Did the cool kids online not have fun? But the issues of a lack of education among those who want to lead and the need to fight off fraud and corruption wherever it rears its ugly head, especially involving political parties, are of utmost importance.
EFF leader Julius Malema also had a go at Steenhuisen: “I understand the mind of a rat will not comprehend that he is sitting with VBS Mutual Bank looters themselves in the government of national unity. The same matriculant is a beneficiary of the loot of R20bn of Steinhoff that was invested by the Public Investment Corporation.”
But others, like Vuyo Zungula of the ATM party, were spot on. He described the government of national unity thus: “It is a partnership of hypocrites who once were opposed to a bloated cabinet while occupying the opposition benches, but now that they are driven in blue lights, having one of the biggest cabinets in our history is no longer an issue.” Quite apt. But the DA can argue, correctly, that they were invited and did not decide on the size of the cabinet. But nothing stops them from expressing their horror at the size of the cabinet and offering to reduce their representation there if this helps reduce the bill for taxpayers. For that to happen, the DA would need to be genuinely not into positions, right?
But it was Naledi Chirwa, of the EFF, who came close to holding President Cyril Ramaphosa accountable for his failures, pointing them out one by one.
“In 2018, Mr President you launched the jobs summit and promised the youth of this country 275,000 jobs per year. You failed. In 2019, you promised 2-million jobs, an end to hunger, halving of crime and improving the school curriculum where a 10-year-old will be able to read for comprehension. You failed.”
She went on. The majority of the so-called representatives of the people, to use Chirwa’s choice descriptor, failed.
With our politicians preoccupied with where they find themselves on the big GNU divide, what’s to become of the poorest among us.
In the end, it was the words of Chirwa that hit a nerve. “Among ourselves as the youth, we know who the true criminals are, we know who stole our land from our grandmothers, who stole our mines...”
As the people of South Africa, we know why our country is not solving the major issues facing us. When we wallowed in load-shedding for years, we knew then how our leaders were afraid to confront the elephant in the room — Andre de Ruyter — because they could not imagine such a fine white man messing up Eskom and not knowing what to do. When the solutions eventually came from the leadership of Mteto Nyathi and later the Eskom GCEO Dan Marokane, many didn’t believe that load-shedding was being sorted for real because they couldn’t “bet on a darkie”, to play on Nyathi’s book title.
At a macro level, we, the people, know this democracy can do much more for us than we get from it. We know our country is endowed with rich minerals to help most of us live more meaningful lives than we’ve seen since 1994. We, the people, know our truth, our struggles and joys. We need much more than ice-boy jabs.
The debate, if we must call it that, gave us comic relief. We need more. We need genuine, practical, dare we say, concomitant action to help take people out of their misery to meaningful lives.
We need leaders. What we have are overgrown kids happy to be back in parliament, taking jibes at each other, not focused on what matters.
Those who have been waiting for the fruits of democracy may be looking at post ANC-majoritarian rule and wondering if this coalition age will bring something different. We wait.
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