The pin is coming out of the grenade

Recently I attended a round-table discussion hosted by the Catholic Parliamentary Liaison Office. It was titled, “Parliament: Degraded or Re-invigorated?”.

Poverty in Masiphumelele, Cape Town. In his column, Mphuthumi Ntabeni notes that the government is increasingly blaming the poor for South Africa’s economic problems. (Photo:?Sydney Duval)

The were vigorous discussions about the role of parliament 20 years into our democracy.

The speakers were Dr Zwelethu Jolobe from the department of Political Studies of the University of Cape Town; Kasper Hahndiek, secretary of parliament  from 1997-2006, and Nozizwe Mandlala-Routledge, former deputy minister of defence and deputy speaker of the National Assembly.

Dr Jolobe outlined the nature of our parliamentary constitutional democracy, where the president is more of a super prime minister than a strict definition of the term would allow.

Cabinet governs and prevails over parliament. Our national assembly is limited to oversight duties (to keep the executive accountable) and policy making.

Mr Hahndiek intimated that our first democratic parliament enjoyed much more relevance because it was, literally, a constitution-drafting parliament.

The debates were also much more rigorous because political differences were wider and strongly felt, he noted. The fact that this rigour is starting to re-emerge could also be a signal of widening political differences.

Ms Madlala-Routledge compared the position of a judge in the court of law with that of the Speaker of the House. The marked difference, she explained, is that it takes years of experience in law and its rules to become a judge. A speaker of parliament, on the other hand, usually is a political deployee, who sometimes lacks the required competences and understanding of the rules of parliament.

Hence it may be that the speaker becomes a catalyst for a more confrontational approach in parliamentary debates. That may be due to incompetence rather than bias.

The round-table generally agreed that:

• Our electoral system is not really a problem. Rather the disintegration, or lack of unity, of opposition politics makes it ineffective.

• Business has disproportionate power in influencing government policies through political funding, threatening to turn our democracy into a plutocracy.

• Policy briefs from academic, faith and civil society are not frequent enough, and have little power beyond lobbying.

• Funding for civil activism is at an all-time low, which hampers the democratic process of participation.

• Reclaiming parliament as a People’s Assembly does not have to entail rude disregard of its rules and regulations.

• Rules need to be fair and effective in compelling the executive to be effectively accountable to parliament.

• The reading of speeches makes parliamentary debates dull, and violates the parliamentary “Members’ Guide”.

Later that evening I attended my Ecclesia group, part of the renewal programme in the archdiocese of Cape Town.

We watched videos and discussed the topic, “An Instrument of Transformation”. The videos emphasised the imperatives of justice and peace through the Catholic Social Teachings, acknowledging that South Africa’s social and economic problems are more than anything else structural and an inheritance of the apartheid regime. The solution is to go to the root of the problem, beyond just charity.

The following day I attended the Ministry of Finance mini-budget statement in the national assembly which made it clear that our fiscus is buckling from government expenditure, especially on social grants.

We are running out of money to keep the lid on the pot of our structural problems—we are in a political and economic gridlock. Meantime, the rising inequalities are threatening the national security of the country since they foster social rebellion.

I recalled the recent mutterings by the president—who blamed the poor for being lazy—and the minister of housing, who proposes denying those under the age of 40 RDP housing.

It seems clear that the government has decided to shift the blame for loss of confidence in our economy from its own corrupt, inept and dysfunctional departments, from the greedy hoarding of big capital, from overzealous credit agencies, from an ineffective neoliberal economic policy.

The blame is now being shifted to the poor. With that, I suppose, the pin will come out of the grenade.

I have a growing feeling that the Social Teachings of the Church will need to raise their head above the parapet, and once again, come to the defence of the poor.

The “Brave New World” Ecclesia series is, to me, good beginnings.