A good deal of Bible-punching, cliches like “going back to basics” and calls for law, order and discipline marked Parliament’s debate on moral regeneration, which in part could have been mistaken for one on corruption and crime.
Violence against women, baby rape and lack of respect for human life were cited by MPs across the political spectrum during Tuesday’s debate as signs of moral decay. Apartheid was blamed, as was globalisation and “immoral capitalist exploitation”.
Suggestions on how to tackle South Africa’s proclaimed moral decay remained scarce: there were calls for every South African to participate in moral regeneration and for a return to family values and a proposal that the training of clerics be subsidised and that they received tax rebates.
Deputy President Jacob Zuma, who heads the moral regeneration campaign, listed the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, the African Union and principles of good economic and political governance as means to moral regeneration.
He will launch a civil society consultation process to draft a moral regeneration charter next month. This is a sequel to April’s inaugural moral regeneration summit, which was followed by various provincial and regional meetings.
After strong words on the all- time-low of South Africa’s morals, which included blame assigned to the Bill of Rights, and references to various Bible verses, it was up to Minister of Public Service and Administration Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi to set the moral record straight.
“We don’t need the kind of negativeness we’ve seen here this afternoon that says ‘hang, hang; kill, kill; cut, cut; chop, chop and you solve the problem’. It doesn’t work that way; that’s much too simple.”
Her reprimand followed African Christian Democratic Party MP Cheryllyn Dudley’s outburst: “Abortion, oral sex, masturbation, homosexual lifestyles and condoms are portrayed as lifesavers, but are in fact designed to achieve population targets”.
Dudley protested that anyone like herself opposed to this “plan of salvation by law and liberal policies” was regarded as evil. “Don’t be deceived. Moral regeneration is simply a smokescreen,” Dudley said.
“It is simply a call for more freedom to sell and use pornography in spite of the rape statistics, legalisation and decriminalisation of prostitution, deconstruction of marriage and family, more homosexual rights, sex tourism, condoms, blatant advertising of licentious sex, health workers forced against their will to violently remove tiny unborn babies from their mothers’ wombs and carry their little bodies to incinerators …”
As ubuntu, family values and moral education for children were repeatedly touted as starting points for moral regeneration, Pan Africanist Congress leader Bishop Stanley Mogoba did not reiterate his previous call for the amputation of limbs of criminals and instead blamed the speed of South Africa’s transition.
“In the excitement of the change the voice of the church was dulled, religious values were given a backseat … People are complaining that our Constitution removed the honour given to God and that we don’t even open our sessions of Parliament with prayer,” said Mogoba.