A number of MPLs across party lines are concerned about the drop in standards in the House
Jaspreet Kindra
KwaZulu-Natal’s legislature rocked with racial slurs this week, causing an MPL to flee the House in tears.
The legislature’s staff expressed concern about the behaviour of some African National Congress politicians and said they had never witnessed such “blatant racism” before.
African Christian Democratic Party MPL Jo-Anne Downs was heckled and jeered on Wednesday when she tried to raise the issue of abuse at the government-run children’s homes. She was accused of taking up the cause of “white children”.
The Democratic Alliance says its members were subjected to “racial gestures” by the ANC’s Dumisani Makhaye on Tuesday.
Downs, a social worker, had tabled a motion calling for an investigation into all places of safety run by the Department of Social Welfare. She had based her motion on the findings of a series of interviews with children placed in one of the care facilities.
Downs revealed to the House that an average of five children a week had fled from the facility for a host of reasons, including inadequate meals and instances of sexual abuse.
“I was hoping for support and a positive response to the motion. These institutions have children of all races,” she says.
But the responses to her speech were interspersed with heckling and racial slurs, with other members laughing. One member said she was “disgusting”. Downs burst into tears and had to leave the chamber to compose herself. When she returned she was chided again for losing “emotional control”.
The DA is complaining formally to the Human Rights Commission about Makhaye’s racism. He said “Abelungu” (a Zulu term for white people) and held his nose and waved in front of it, as if dispensing a foul smell every time a member of the DA rose to speak.
A number of MPLs from across party lines have expressed concern at the deterioration in the standards of conduct in the House.
DA whip Belinda Scott says the party is compiling affidavits from members of the House who witnessed Makhaye’s gestures.
Makhaye has denied making the gestures and says if he had done anything unparliamentary, the DA should have drawn the attention of the speaker to it immediately.
He says accusing him of racism is tantamount to Nazis accusing Jews of racism.
Makhaye says the DA is resorting to “Vlakplaas” tactics, which they utilised against “our people through the wars that had raged from the 1970s through to the early 1990s … Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones.”
Scott says: “If a white member of Parliament had made the same inference and gestures about the alleged smell of black members, he or she would have been ousted from the chamber, possibly never to return and rightly so, for there is no place in South Africa for such discriminatory and venomous hate speech and signs.”
DA MPL Mark Lowe tabled a motion in the House on Wednesday calling on ANC leader and President Thabo Mbeki to discipline Makhaye.
The DA earlier this week raised questions in the legislature over Makhaye’s R22500 luxury home, the lease on which is being paid by the taxpayer. When reports of the high rental hit the press last year Makhaye moved out.
This is not the first time that the DA has lodged a complaint against Makhaye. Last year, the housing MEC, who is a member of the ANC’s national executive committee, read out a play a supposedly sarcastic take on racism in the legislature. The play was described by the DA as “racist”, “offensive” and anti-Semitic.
The play contained a national anthem composed of only six words and two sentences repeated endlessly: “White is wit. Black is bad.”
Besides the refrain, the play’s protagonists, supposedly based on FW de Klerk and DA leader Tony Leon, made comments such as the “very continued existence of the white race is under threat. The Ks have voted overwhelmingly for the commies, the CNAs [sic].”
The acting speaker, the ANC’s Willis Mchunu, was not available for comment.