Change your partner, two by two. We have had a week now, to watch our elected representatives doing their dosi-do across the legislature floor. And our worst expectations have largely been confirmed.
The case of Louis Marneweck, sole representative of the Freedom Front Plus in the Mpumalanga legislature, is emblematic. Marneweck defected to a new “Christian” party, of which he is the leader. So he gets two more years as an MPL, responsible to absolutely no one but himself and his ethically flexible god. FF+ voters in the province are left without any voice in its parliament. You don’t have to like their views to find that outrageous.
Themba Sono’s Alliance of Free Democrats is a similar confection. It seems primarily to be free of policies, credibility and Patricia de Lille. A court decision was pending as we went to press on whether Independent Democrats leadership had been justified in booting Sono out before the opening of the floor-crossing window.
More legal wrangling surrounds Lennit Max, the ID’s other delinquent MPL. He has been taken into the warm embrace of the Democratic Alliance and its Western Cape leader, Theuns Botha, much to the discomfort of of the DA’s sensible wing.
Ziba Jiyane’s National Democratic Convention (Nadeco) is, arguably, a little different. Formed out of the Inkatha Freedom Party’s left rib, it at least seems to be a political home for a relatively coherent, modernising tendency within the IFP. But if Jiyane’s allies could not take control of the party that got them elected, they should have bitten the bullet and stayed put, or resigned and built a credible alternative for IFP voters and others attracted by their approach.
Inevitably, the African National Congress is the biggest winner, with new seats in the National Assembly and several provincial legislatures.
Commentators and opposition parties generally argue that the ruling party can use political patronage to emerge from each floor-crossing period significantly stronger than the electorate intended it to be. They are right.
But the floor-crossing legislation is also structurally biased against small parties in a way which is particularly problematic in a dominant party system.
Because 10% of any party caucus must cross before any individual member can do so, the barrier to exit for would-be defectors from the ANC is insuperably high in the National Assembly. At least 27 MPs would have to co-ordinate their move in secret, a highly unlikely prospect. It would take just five conspirators to ditch the DA, and an Azapo MP suffering from divided loyalties could leave his heart in the opposition benches and take his head to the ANC. Only 0,2% of an MP from the two-seat party would be needed to meet the 10% threshhold.
Everyone is complaining, from judges facing endless urgent interdicts to ordinary voters who clearly understand what the theft of their votes means.
The law on this may be constitutionally sound, but it is odious. The ruling party has made it clear that it is not interested in introducing direct constituency representation into the electoral system. In those circumstances, the floor-crossing legislation should be treated as the affront to our democracy and repealed.
An obsession with terrorism
One of most unfortunate effects of the 9/11 attacks is that Americans — or, more specifically, the American right that now rules the roost — have become obsessed with terrorism. In United States domestic and foreign policy, no issue comes near it — neither the looming energy crisis, nor global climate change, nor the geopolitical threats posed by mass poverty and inequality.
Hurricane Katrina has highlighted how President George W Bush and his inner circle of blinkered securocrats have perverted national priorities. Federal funds needed to shore up the levees that protect New Orleans from inundation dried to a trickle after the astronomically expensive invasion of Iraq and the launch of the homeland security system.
While troops were almost instantly on the scene in the aftermath of the hurricane to shoot and arrest looters and protect property, 20 000 poor New Orleans residents were stranded for days at the city’s Superdome, with minimal food, clean water, power and medical care.
The telling contrast between the state’s chaotic failures in New Orleans and the logistical miracle of the Iraq invasion — where 160 000 troops were deployed — has not escaped world notice. The department of homeland security was set up to co-ordinate a wide spectrum of federal agencies. In response to Katrina, it achieved nothing.
And, in New York, the US filibuster at the United Nations won it further opprobrium. The ambassador, John Bolton, shocked the world when he sought to change completely the thrust of the Millennium Summit, which starts next week. The US is seeking to alter the focus of the summit from human security towards the battle against terrorism, notwithstanding the lessons of Katrina so tragically on view.
Bolton is advocating that the Millennium Development Goals, a set of ambitious pro-poor targets on education, water provision and nutrition, be dropped. The nations of the developing world must band together to ensure that the US’s short-sightedness does not blind them all. The path to global peace is through human security.