Howard Barrell:OVER A BARREL
As President Nelson Mandela prepared his farewell to Parliament this week, I could not help feeling that the grand old man was not the only person deserving of applause. Every MP could also justifiably take a bow. So, too, could each South African.
For Mandela’s farewell on Friday March 26, the last day of the parliamentary session, would mark more than his personal triumph. It would register a far broader, national achievement.
For over the past five short years South Africans have travelled a long, long way. We have, by and large peacefully, set about building a free and fair country. Moreover, we have done so with a confidence and competence that is the envy of people in many other parts of the world – from Kosovo to Cambodia, from Northern Ireland to the Democratic Republic of Congo. A little self- congratulation is quite in order.
Our parliamentarians are justified in feeling even more pleased with themselves than the rest of us with the close of our first democratic Parliament – or of the third annual sitting of our second democratic Parliament, if you are a pedant who remembers we started off with an interim constitution in 1994 and only got the real thing in 1996.
Contrary to charges that they have been enjoying the view from the restaurant car on the gravy train, most of our 490 MPs have worked very hard – and some of them far harder than is good for their health.
In five years they have passed 534 pieces of legislation – a workload unheard of in other parliaments around the world. In the process, they have fundamentally recast policy and the legal framework of the country.
This pressure of work made understandable, even if still inexcusable, last year’s fist fight on the floor of the National Assembly between New National Party MP Manie Schoeman and African National Congress MP Johnny de Lange.
Not all MPs, incidentally, thought poorly of De Lange for retaliating. Instead, a number of them, including members of the NNP, suggested the names of a few other MPs De Lange might use as a punchbag if the urge ever took him again. My sources tell me that the name of Andr Fourie, the rather sour- faced NNP frontbencher, was the name most frequently suggested to De Lange.
If Fourie is one of Parliament’s less popular members, De Lange is certainly one of the hardest working. He has made the justice committee, which previews most legislation presented to Parliament, the most effective of the 45-odd committees which do the bulk of the work on new laws before they finally find their way through the two chambers, the 400-member National Assembly and the 90- member National Council of Provinces, and into the statute book.
Committee chairs, together with the party whips and National Assembly Speaker Frene Ginwala, have been the unsung heroes who have made Parliament the success it has been. Alongside De Lange, the more effective committee chairs have included Ken Andrew, the Democratic Party MP on public accounts, Pregs Govender of the ANC who oversees the committee on improvement of the quality of life and status of women, and ANC MPs Gwen Mahlangu on environmental affairs and tourism, Mandisi Mpahlwa on finance and Duma Nkosi on mineral and energy affairs.
Ginwala has been one of the stars of the session. By turns sharp, stern and also tolerant of the humour and childishness to which MPs resort to make long debates tolerable, she has earned the respect, if not always the affection, of her colleagues. For example, through astute handling of the political parties, she managed to make of the Schoeman/De Lange punch-up something which has strengthened MPs’ commitment to maintaining the dignity of their institution.
The more relaxed Patrick “Terror” Lekota, who chairs the second chamber, the National Council of Provinces, has achieved a similar reputation. And his able new deputy, Naledi Pandor, is hotly tipped to take over from Ginwala if, as many speculate, the current speaker takes up a prestigious international appointment in the not too distant future.
If last year’s fist fight was the low point of the first democratic Parliament, for some the high point came when, in February 1996, workmen removed from Parliament’s inner walls the hundreds of paintings and photographs of the uniformly miserable men who gave South Africa centuries of injustice. The broader view seems to be that the climactic moment in this Parliament came with the formal adoption of the new Constitution that same year.
Ironically, the two men who probably did most to set the terms of the Constitution – Cyril Ramaphosa for the ANC and Roelf Meyer for the National Party – are no longer MPs. But Meyer could well be back after the election on June 2 as co-leader of the United Democratic Movement. And, to judge by his standing among ANC MPs and ordinary members, there is a seat for Ramaphosa whenever he chooses to return to Parliament, perhaps in another five years’ time.
Our Constitution is now widely recognised as one of the world’s finest. Scholars regularly refer to it. And foreigners who have visited our Parliament have been deeply impressed by it. One British MP broke down and wept in the public gallery last year, so moved was he at the sight of Mandela addressing the National Assembly and his knowledge of the price that had been paid to buy all South Africans the right to an equal vote.
Whatever our shortcomings as a country – the joblessness, the poverty, the crime, the uncertainty – our Parliament has worked and so, too, has our democracy. Take a bow.