Democratic Alliance (DA) parliamentary leader Sandra Botha tabled a notice of motion in the National Assembly on Tuesday calling for Parliament to be dissolved.
Speaking during debate on President Thabo Mbeki’s State of the Nation address, she said in order to tackle the challenges currently facing South Africa, it is necessary to start from a clean slate.
”Therefore I now table … a notice of motion to ask that this House resolves to dissolve so that a fresh election can be called and the people of South Africa be given the opportunity to choose,” she said.
The motion sparked an uproar in the House.
Earlier, Botha told MPs South Africa is experiencing a crisis.
”There is a deep desire among South Africans to be rid of all the pervasive evidence of corruption, crime and collapsing infrastructure which invades our daily world. Ordinary South Africans want to have discipline in schools, functioning hospitals, safe streets for kids to play in, old people treated with dignity, and police that can be trusted.”
The DA has offered solutions and help ”at every turn” in order to achieve these things for South Africa. However, it is now convinced ”that the only way to achieve this is to have a new person at the helm and a new government at the helm”.
Such a person and government have to be chosen by the people of South Africa, Botha said.
In a speech sharply critical of Mbeki and the ruling African National Congress, she said the party’s chief decision-making body, its national executive committee, is made up ”substantially of individuals who are either suspected of, or who have already been convicted of crimes”.
She challenged Mbeki to ”tell the truth” on the source of his party’s funding, saying the ANC has built up assets totalling R1,6-billion under his presidency.
”We now ask you, Mr President, to tell us the truth: give us your assurance that not a single cent of the R1,6-billion was received from the prime contractors of the arms deal; or from the proceeds of the oil-for-food scandal in Iraq.”
Botha also criticised Mbeki and his government’s handling of the economy. ”Mr President, in defiance of the claims you made since your [State of the Nation] address on Friday, I must point out that the policies of the ANC with respect to the economy are failing in implementation.”
The government’s skills development and micro-economic policies are too interventionist, too bureaucratic, too resource and capacity intensive, and too inefficient to deliver the goods in time, she said.
Botha repeated her party’s call for Mbeki to dismiss those ministers responsible for the electricity crisis.
”Neither [Public Enterprises] Minister [Alec] Erwin, nor the former or current ministers of minerals and energy, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka and Buyelwa Sonjica, has uttered a reliable word to the people of South Africa in the decade that the government has been in the know about this impending disaster. Why are these ministers allowed to remain in office?” she asked.
On international relations, she said South Africa has rightly been accused of shielding a number of unjust regimes. This has ”lost us our status in the world as a prime defender of human rights”.
Botha said it is indefensible that Mbeki has remained silent on the critical situation in Kenya, and has publicly endorsed next month’s elections in Zimbabwe. ”This determined refusal to face the undeniable has robbed South Africa’s hard-won status, in the 1990s, as a moral beacon on the global stage.” — Sapa