IN most countries, political parties tussle to become the government. In this country, members of all the major political parties are elbowing each other aside in the rush for the opposition benches. The National Party and the Inkatha Freedom Party, despite both being members of the government, also want to lead the opposition. The Democratic Party wants to take up its traditional adversarial position. And many ANC caucus members are also inclined to play the parliamentary watchdog. Would the real opposition stand up, please?
Anyone who cares about government, and the extent to which it succeeds or fails, will care about the effectiveness of its opposition, since parliamentary scrutiny should keep the government on its toes. More so in our situation, where one party won an overwhelming election victory and any party with more than five percent is part of the government, and therefore a muzzled watchdog.
Who can we rely on to play this role: the opposition-in- government or the government-in-opposition? Of the minority parties, the NP is the strongest in numbers, but it has become a party without a soul. It stands for nothing except looking after the jobs of whites and party loyalists. If this is a watchdog it is of the bull-terrier kind: a mindless beast that, for no apparent reason, fastens its jaws on any other dog that moves.
The IFP emerged from the election as a wholly regional party. It has virtually no support outside kwa-Zulu/Natal and its image is severely tainted by the “hit squad” allegations against senior leaders and the kwaZulu Police, for which Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi himself was responsible. This is a formula for provincial battles with the central government, but not effective parliamentary opposition. If it is a watchdog, it is a Rottweiler: a dog whose main virtue is its willingness to attack anyone or anything on order.
The DP is relying on its long experience as a tiny, but vocal, party to re-establish itself after its election disaster. But it does not have the moral authority that Helen Suzman had to sustain her in her lone years in parliament — Nelson Mandela isn’t quite as easy a target as John Vorster; and there is little likelihood that an overwhelmingly white, increasingly Thatcherite party is likely to command more than a tiny bloc of support. As a watchdog, it is a Maltese poodle, capable of little more than sporadic yelping.
The PAC is a watchdog grown too old, too decrepit and too toothless to come out of its kennel.
Is the desire of left-leaning ANC caucus members to play the opposition role a real one, or just a stubborn habit from the decades of extra-parliamentary activism? How quickly will the comfort of parliamentary salaries take its toll on the outspokenness of this caucus? Certainly, the most interesting and least predictable politics so far has come from this group of MPs, and in the absence of any real and substantial opposition from any other party, this may remain the case for a while. This watchdog is still a puppy, and a mutt — it’s anybody’s guess just how it will grow up.