A member of South Africa’s National Council of Provinces — one of the two houses of parliament — has warned fellow members not to develop delusions of grandeur and has even taken the mickey out of President Thabo Mbeki’s fondness for motor cavalcades.
African Christian Democratic Party member of Parliament (MP) Kent Durr, a former South African ambassador to the Court of St James, told a debate attended by Deputy President Jacob Zuma that he had learned in his life ”that the richer or more successful the country, the simpler the offices and the arrangements”.
In the speech circulated in the parliamentary press gallery on Wednesday, he said: ”… when the President attends a debate of the NCOP is it really necessary for him to arrive in a cavalcade of cars from Tuynhuys, only 200m away and then to advance up a long red carpet. It is simply too much and smacks of Lilliputian thinking”.
He noted that the President of Switzerland drove himself to the office and UK ministers’ offices are ”rather like a standard MP’s office in the Marks Building (the opposition wing of the South African parliament).”
”The word minister is biblical and means servant. We need servant leadership.”
He also questioned the endless round of exhibitions by departments and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in parliament.
”We need somehow to create a venue where departmental exhibitions can take place without making the lobbies and corridors of power look shabby and littered with pamphlets and trinkets everyone takes and few read or use.”
”I don’t know about my colleagues but every morning I am bombed with expensive glossy reports and magazines, produced at great cost, most of which we consign to the waste paper basket.”
”The departments need to filter what they put out and use lower cost means of production and of informing us. I feel sorry for the trees that are cut down.”
”It is vital that we keep our lives here simple and Spartan. We are spending other people’s money.”
”Cocktail parties, lunches, dinners and fashion parades are all good and well, but not for us who are paid to do our jobs already.” – I-Net Bridge