‘HOOR HOOR’ — LOUDLY
There is a new honesty in the constitution-writing process, reports Chris Louw
IT was the World Trade Centre all over again, though not quite. The urbane Cyril Ramaphosa was in the chair, the wiry Mac Maharaj was there, his hand thoughtfully covering his mouth, and so were the boyish Roelf Meyer and the Inkatha Freedom Party’s bearded Walter Felgate.
When the fast-talking Pravin Gordhan referred to the necessity for an “engine room” to facilitate the negotiation process, three years’ hard work was suddenly wiped out, as if the elections had never happened, as if we were back in the dark old Kempton Park days, with the obstinate shadow of a Mangosuthu Buthelezi lurking in the background.
And so the depression of the pre-democracy period dawned with a vengeance on parliament this week. “Codesa speak” was back, with all its cliches: sufficient consensus, horse-trading, process-driven, transparency, inclusiveness, close to the people, engine room.
There were differences, however. The stately precincts of parliament provided a more dignified backdrop than the shoddy makeshift structures of the WTC. The old, familiar faces were there, yes, but there were also new ones: those members of the national assembly (NA) and the senate who deem-ed it worth their while to attend the first plenary session in the “noble task” (Ramaphosa’s expression) of building a constitution.
Sitting in the chamber where the NA normally meets, the constituent assembly (CA) — consisting of a joint sitting of the NA and the senate — met in an air of informality more reminiscent of the WTC than of parliament. Ramaphosa took his seat at the officials’ table rather than the speaker’s chair, and did without a formal robe.
The media were chided for not fully informing the public during the negotiations. But only half of the 400 MPs turned up for the first working session of the CA on Monday, and of 90 senators less than 70 turned up to represent their provinces.
MPs were not the only ones absent. Thankfully, said the Democratic Party’s Douglas Gibson, one other person wasn’t there, allowing the process hopefully to get along more speedily: the interrupter Amichand Rajbansi, who used to provide some respite for journalists while he filled the negotiating room with hot air.
No one mentioned Bophuthat-swana’s Rowan Cronje. Maybe they didn’t miss him; maybe it was hard to imagine that his country ever existed. At least the absence of the familiar Bophuthatswana and Ciskei faces brought home one truth: the representativeness of the present body, which will shape the country’s “final” constitution in the next 20 months.
This time Ulundi did not loom large over the process. No need for Felgate to run to a backroom and phone home for instructions. Buthelezi was present, scribbling away at his desk while the bearded anthropologist took up the familiar role of setting out the “caveats” for his party’s participation.
Not only the surroundings differed. Felgate — remember how savagely he was chided by Joe Slovo when Inkatha finally agreed to take part in the elections? — only had compliments for members of the ANC for setting party-politicking aside: Slovo, Alec Erwin and Thabo Mbeki. This generosity was indicative of the fact that things have indeed changed since that fateful night when the negotiations were concluded with last-minute deals being worked out on the back of envelopes in crowded rooms by tired men with blood-shot eyes.
The elections are past. A new government has been sworn in. President Nelson Mandela has celebrated his first 100 days in power. The National Party is an ambiguous “20 percent opposition” within the government of national unity. FW de Klerk is a deputy president. The roadshow has moved to Cape Town.
Now, said ANC representatives, the process will be transparent, the public will be directly involved, the mistakes of Kempton Park will be rectified. At last the process is truly representative. The people, not lawyers, will draw up the constitution, promised Water Affairs and Forestry Minister Kader Asmal.
He wanted to put it on record, Asmal added, that the ANC had no intention of using its majority to drive through decisions. This “peace treaty”, this “grand compromise”, this “historic document”, in spite of lacking eloquence, must not be despised — it must form the basis of a new constitution.
Singer Jennifer Ferguson was sitting right in the back somewhere, reading what looked like a women’s magazine. Tony Yengeni, firebrand of the Cape Flats, sat alone in his bench, starring expressionless at the podium. Joe Modise stood up and walked out. Winnie Mandela, in African robe, came in, smiled at colleagues, opened her bag and worked through correspondence. Carl Niehaus picked up his attache case and made for the door, in a very deliberate manner.
Meyer, his Afrikaans-speaking tongue sometimes finding it cumbersome to be wrapped around English words, warned that the overriding priority should be to rebuild and redevelop South Africa, “otherwise our new constitution will be worth nothing”.
Both Meyer and CA deputy chairman Leon Wessels delivered parts of their speeches in Afri-kaans — another divergence from WTC conventions, where all deliberations were in English. On this occasion translation services were provided by the parliamentary staff.
The idea of the plenary meeting, said Rama-phosa at the outset, was to set up “the machinery for the drafting of the constitution”. It meant that the CA was to structure itself and decide how it would function. The steering committee proposed a “streamlined” constitutional committee to get on with the work.
The decision was accepted. In practice, this meant the CA was reduced to just another “talking shop”. The CA, added Wessels, was not just “parliament with a hat on” — it was a separate body which had to develop its own rules and conventions.
During the Kempton Park era, when democracy was an as yet unattained dream and the negotiatons balanced on a knife edge, the country’s leaders could afford — and even bent over backwards — to be accommodating to political adversaries.
Now that they are all in parliament, jobs secured, Mercedes Benzes in the government parking garage, political has-beens dumped into the dustbins of apartheid, they can allow themselves the luxury of snide interjections. What last year would have had Ramaphosa on his hind legs, indignantly complaining that the “dignity of this house has been slighted”, is par for the course.
Speakers are applauded, there are loud “hoor hoors” (also from the ANC side) when something agreeable is said, and jeers have become part of the constitution-writing procedures. (“Why don’t you rather toyi-toyi?” shouted Nats as one ANC member drawled away. Boy Geldenhuys was jeered when he warned: “What happens when the majority is wrong?”)
Suddenly, after the sincerity and dignity with which the negotiation decisions were accepted in Kempton Park, there is a new honesty about the process. “No more horse-trading,” pleaded the Pan Africanist Congress’ Patricia de Lille. Documents must no longer be made available as late as during Kempton Park, insisted Gibson, because “it led to shoddy decisions”.
Those very negotiation decisions — which culminated in the transitional constitution — are under scrutiny again. ANC deputy minister Mohammed Valli Moosa warned that the cost of government will have to be looked at again. Decisions that there should be 27 cabinet members and 90 senators were made “in the heat of the moment during negotiations” — they will have to be revisited.
And things will change even more. Remember, cautioned speakers from the smaller parties, that the new constitution will have to be completed by May 9 1996 — probably before the present constitution would have been implemented fully . “How are we going to know where the problem areas are?” asked the Freedom Front’s Corne Mulder.
The ANC’s Salie Manie had other concerns. “I don’t know what I am doing in parliament,” he called in exasperation. “I am listening to speeches all the time. I am very confused.” He will need a lot of patience: judging by the first day’s proceedings, there are still many, many speeches waiting to be made.
Maybe it is just as well that the 44-member constitutional committee, housed in the Marx Building, will act as “engine room” and do most of the real work. Dominated by 26 ANC representatives, substantial changes to the constitution can be expected.