Minority opposition parties in the National Assembly have found common ground, despite their differences
Howard Barrell and Jaspreet Kindra
The oddest of couples on the opposition benches in the National Assembly have emerged as the stars of the first year of the new Parliament that has just come to a close.
Politically, Mosibudi Mangena, president of the Azanian People’s Organisation (Azapo), and former dominee Cassie Aucamp, leader of the Afrikaner Eenheidsbeweging (AEB), could hardly be further apart. But they sit alongside each other on the same bench of the National Assembly.
They also differ sharply as personalities. Whereas Mangena is serious to the point of sometimes appearing humourless, Aucamp is the funniest man in Parliament. Yet they have developed a warm friendship which lasts at least as far as the gates of the parliamentary compound.
Even more remarkable, as presences in Parliament they have come to command unusually high levels of respect and affection – no easy matter for MPs who are their parties’ lone representatives and, so, seriously overstretched.
MPs tend to listen when Mangena speaks in debates, and his contributions have earned him the public approval of President Thabo Mbeki.
There have been rumours this week that Mbeki may soon offer Mangena a senior position in the government to reward him for his cooperative stance and quiet engagement with the African National Congress on a number of issues. Mangena denies receiving any such offer.
Presidential representative Parks Mankahlana did not directly deny the speculation this week, saying instead: “I know nothing about it.”
For his part, Aucamp, the former Thabazimbi dominee in the Gereformeerde Kerk who is as sharp as a razor and as sweet as a koeksuster, regularly brings the house down with his quips about other MPs and against himself.
Addressing the assembly at the end of last year after five months as an MP in an assembly with a massive ANC majority, Aucamp said: “I can quite frankly say today that, throughout this whole time, I have received only friendliness, sincerity and trust – within my own caucus.”
He added: “On Parliament as a whole my impression is that … it is like a cowboy movie. One knows beforehand what the result will be, but one can make the plot more interesting.”
As a parting gift before the Christmas break, he proposed giving himself a CD, in recognition of his ideal of Afrikaner unity, of the song Dreams Are Good Friends When You’re Lonely.
He has been no less entertaining in the various committees on which he serves.
As a member of the committee which considered the Equality Bill, he listened in growing bemusement to an earnest contribution by Rob Davies of the ANC on how the Bill should prevent discrimination on grounds of pregnancy, intended pregnancy, probable pregnancy and possible pregnancy. Eventually, Aucamp could take it no longer. He suggested to the chair that the committee distribute a poster declaring:
“Ladies, Ladies,
If you want babies,
Come to Rob Davies.”
Talk of Aucamp causes Mangena to giggle. “Our politics do not meet at all,” says the man who led the Black Consciousness Movement of Azania in exile.
“Aucamp represents conservative Afrikaner interests. But human beings are not like stones. We sit next to each other. He melts your heart with his jokes. He is a very funny man. He is a minister of the church, but he is very naughty. At a personal level, he is a nice man.”
Aucamp is similarly complimentary about Mangena. “He is a friend,” says Aucamp.
Mangena, he adds, always removes his shoes when he sits down at their shared bench in the assembly. So, during a sitting, when Mangena was focused on proceedings, Aucamp quietly took one of his shoes. He then passed it down the row of MPs sitting nearby.
When the time came for Mangena to leave the assembly, he spent some time looking for his shoe and as much time again wondering whether he had, perhaps, come into the assembly with only one shoe, before Aucamp relented and had it returned to him.
Each man is deeply committed to his politics. It is difficult to conceive of a more difficult political path than that travelled by Mangena.
He has stuck with the black consciousness movement through thick, but mainly through thin – inside the country and outside it, on Robben Island for five years and off it.
A very bright man who gained an MSc in applied mathematics under difficult conditions, he has eschewed the prospect of a lucrative career in the ANC’s patronage networks or the private sector.
This, in the view of some, is one of the qualities that may have recommended him to Mbeki: Mangena is decidedly not one of the “careerists” or the corrupt against whom the top ANC leadership has recently begun to rail.
If he does get an offer from Mbeki he will, he says, “take it to Azapo” to which, in his brother’s words, he is “as loyal as a dog”.
He finds Parliament frustrating. “Most of the time I feel ineffective. We spend most of our time participating in lawmaking. But this doesn’t translate immediately into policy. So, when – like today – I was visiting a rural community outside Pietersburg, my constituency, I could not explain to them that I had sat in Parliament yesterday grappling with commas in legislation. It is of no relevance to them.”
He says: “Nothing has really changed in the country. Black people still wake up every morning in townships to make their way to work in the better part of the cities where the white people still live.”
For Aucamp, serving his people in the AEB and Parliament is part of his “calling”.
He is working to achieve Afrikaner cultural and political unity again, so that it is possible for one or more organisations to talk for a majority of this minority.
In Parliament, his priority is to push for constitutional change that will create more space and rights for cultural and political minorities.