Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi accused MPs serving on the Home Affairs portfolio committee Tuesday of treating him ”as a political doormat” in a tetchy interaction on Tuesday.
Buthelezi, Home Affairs Minister, asked to brief the committee on various issues including the court challenge to regulations made in terms of the Immigration Act, lashed out at African National Congress MPs for saying that he seldom attended meetings of the committee. One report indicated that he had been in Ulundi last Tuesday ”sorting out cross-overs” during the defection period when he had been expected to attend a session of the committee.
A visibly angry Buthelezi said: ”I accept the role of the (parliamentary) portfolio committee to carry out an oversight role over us as the executive. I do not question that in the least but I have been treated by this committee as a political doormat and no other minister has ever been treated as I have been … since 1994.”
Buthelezi has been involved in a longstanding clash with the committee over the Immigration Act in particular — legislation which was long delayed by protracted disagreements about its content.
With current committee chairman Patrick Chauke, an ANC MP, calling on MPs not to politicise the relationship with the line-function minister, Buthelezi said: ”I am pained to remember how I have been treated by previous chairpersons of this portfolio committee and by some members of it in all these years. I can only conclude that they see me first and foremost as the leader of the IFP and not as a loyal member of the president’s cabinet. I have endured a lot of humiliations for the sake of reconciliation. I feel bitter and saddened by the fact that if this reconciliation falls apart, there will be members of this committee who have contributed to it.”
He explained on Wednesday that he had not deliberately missed the meeting last week as he had attended an event in honour of the late Pan Africanist Congress leader Robert Sobukwe at Fort Hare University and was not in Ulundi as reported.
This had been a prior engagement. On March 17 the Cape High Court extended the suspension of the new Immigration Act and its regulations which were supposed to have come into force last month to April 7. The court will sit on April 7 to hear argument in Buthelezi’s application for leave to appeal against the original finding.
Buthelezi told the committee that the challenge brought to the immigration regulations — by immigration lawyer Gary Eisenberg — related to whether such regulations ”were correctly made in terms of section 52 (1) the Act … or whether they should have been made in terms of the and in partial compliance with the provisions set out in section 7(1) of the Act”.
The content of the regulations were not the object of the challenge, he pointed out, noting that his department had interpreted the two sections as giving him power to make regulations during the transitional period without having to follow the provisions set out in section 7(1) of the Act.
Section 52(1) related to how the regulations were made during the transition — from the Aliens Control Act — while section 7(1) of the Act is the general provision prescribing how regulations are to be made.
The court ruled that the regulations were incorrectly made in terms of section 52(1) and should have been made in terms of section 7(1). Because of a saving provision in the Act, the regulations made in terms of the Alien Control Act would have been preserved.
”Therefore the implementation of the court’s decision would have led to complete chaos in the administration of migration control with irreparable consequences.”
Buthelezi said he had formally begun the section 7(1) regulation-making process by publishing in the government gazette and tabling in parliament notice of his intention to make regulations as contemplated in that section. He was proceeding with the appeal as well. – I-Net Bridge