Steven Friedman
WORM’S EYE VIEW
The “meaningless” may mean more than we think. One example may be parliamentary questions. The African National Congress wants to re-engineer them by allocating them to parties according to their strength. And it has scrapped “interpellations” in which MPs can initiate debates with ministers.
This has drawn predictable reaction from the Democratic Party which, besides being in the outrage business, has made asking questions a preoccupation. It complains that the ANC wants to hog them to prevent MPs holding its ministers to account.
More may be at stake than whether DP members can derive a warm glow by asking clever questions. Certainly, most of us pay little attention to parliamentary questions and answers. Nor is question time the only vehicle available to elicit government information. Its fate will hardly, then, decide whether most voters get the government to work for them.
But the importance of the issue lies less in the shape of question time than in the thinking which lies behind the desire to change it.
Perhaps the fullest ANC response has come from Gauteng Speaker Firoz Cachalia who argues that questions are not used by opposition MPs to extract information but to score points, and that holding the government to account is not an opposition monopoly: governing party MPs can do it too.
There are obvious answers. Governments usually see embarrassing questions as “points scoring” – they are essential because of this, not despite it. And you do not have to restrict opposition questions to allow governing party MPs to hold ministers to account.
But more interesting than Cachalia’s views on question time are the bigger ideas about the role of opposition they reveal – that creating channels for point-scoring is unhealthy and that the opposition is not as essential to holding the government to account as it thinks.
Others, too – motivated in part by understandable irritation at the DP’s “fight back” campaign – have asked whether the traditional liberal idea of democracy is really as essential as we are told. They are talking less about democracies in general than this one in particular. Opposition politics is a vehicle for venting minority frustrations rather than for a contest between the contending views and interests of most citizens – as traditional views of democracy suggest it should be. The debate between the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the ANC leadership, or Aids activists and the government, is arguably a more effective route to accountability than parliamentary ritual.
Nor is Parliament necessarily the most effective place for minorities to pursue their interests: chambers of business, ratepayers’ associations and the media may play the role better. The real checks on the government are outside Parliament. This view restricts the opposition to finding fault in ways which do little for most citizens, in the minority as well as the majority.
Some officials and ministers also feel that parliamentary questions prevent them doing their jobs because some may be trivial or demand much time and effort. Given the limits on government capacity, they seem an unnecessary distraction from national priorities. So creating platforms for this sort of opposition expression seems to provide openings for maligning the new order which do nothing to build it.
But expressing difference in Parliament – “point-scoring” – rarely weakens democracy. On the contrary, it is its essence.
Yes, some criticism of the government is merely prejudice in disguise. And a style of opposition obsessed with fault-finding often does more to create disillusion with the system than with the governing party. But that is a small price compared to the alternative: suppressed resentment which ensures that people who might see themselves as part of the society simply withdraw.
If there were no conflict or difference, there would be little point in democracy, which allows conflict to be expressed in manageable ways. If parliamentary questions do that, this is a strength, not a weakness.
Nor is conflict in this society simply all matterll between the racial minority and majority. While the DP has hogged the debate on question time, one effect of the change would be to virtually prevent the Pan Africanist Congress’s Patricia de Lille and the Azanian People’s Organisation’s Mosibudi Mangena from asking questions.
Why should that matter? Because who is allowed to be heard does not depend merely on numbers. While the PAC and Azapo and the Freedom Front and Afrikaner Eenheidsbeweging do not win many votes, they represent important currents in the society. We are better off if they are heard more often in Parliament than if they are squeezed on to the margins.
And, despite the opposition’s weaknesses – of which lack of a grassroots base is the greatest – Parliament does matter, even if much real political action occurs outside it.
Governments do not only take notice of opposition parties if they are likely to win the next election: embarrassment is often a powerful tool.
De Lille is a case in point. The ANC may not like her, but she does raise issues others do not and so helps hold the government to account. So does the DP and some other opposition parties who lack credibility among most voters.
Similarly, even if all the opposition is doing in question time is to vent frustrations, that would be a gain too. People do not support political parties only because they hope they will influence events as business chambers or ratepayers’ groups do. They might simply want their voice heard. And that in itself might make them more comfortable with the system.
Also, while it would be nice if ANC MPs held the government to account, they usually do not. Why should legislators who share loyalties with, and have an interest in the political health of, those in the government be better at holding them to account than those who do not? Even an opposition which lacks credibility is more likely to force the government to account for itself than members of the governing party.
Finally, perhaps the greatest irony about attempts to reduce opposition platforms is that the ANC does not need them: its majority is secure however many speeches the opposition makes. Parties do not always have the luxury of encouraging expression which does not threaten them. By curbing expressions of difference, the ANC would be spurning an unusual opportunity.
So opposition posturing might be irritating to ANC politicians. Spates of questions may irk stressed and stretched ministers and officials. But they – and we – are better off with them than without them.
Allowing differences to be expressed has costs. So does old age. But, in both lcases, those unwilling to bear them should weigh them against llllthe unpalatable llllalternative.