In a dismal race to the bottom, on Tuesday afternoon it was hard to decide which was more lamentable — the performance of President Cyril Ramaphosa or that of the national assembly.
It was presidential question time, which only comes around once a quarter and ought to be worth waiting for. For more than two hours, things chugged along at a snail’s pace, heading towards question 11, the only one that anyone was remotely interested in.
Even after more than two years of practice, neither parliament nor its inhabitants seem to have mastered the technology of online meetings. Now there is a ghastly hybrid formula, with about a hundred MPs crammed into the makeshift parliamentary chamber. The actual national assembly was burnt down in January in circumstances so mysterious that no one seems motivated to discover what happened.
I have not yet found the energy to find out the basis on which it is determined who is in the room and who is on Zoom. Because frankly, who cares? But it reminds me of the C stream in my third form in my South London school, when all the naughtiest boys were thrown together as if to conduct some grisly experiment in social engineering.
That’s not entirely fair. The estimable United Democratic Movement MP Nqabayomzi Kwankwa is one of the few remaining adults in the room. His point, made with calm persistence as his colleagues from across the spectrum traded random insults, was that if parliament is to have any meaning, then the president should answer the questions put to him by members.
The problem with this point was that given the childish behaviour around him, what serious meaning can parliament possibly have? What right does it have to be taken seriously if it can’t muster the self-restraint to conduct its own proceedings with even a modicum of dignity?
Watching online was unbearable. The speaker, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, looks and sounds as if she would rather be anywhere else. She can barely muster the energy to call the rabble to order and as her boredom sets in she far too easily loses control. This means the “debate” that went on after Ramaphosa’s initial non-answer answer is not only unruly and increasingly irascible but also elongated, stretching way beyond the three hours allocated for questions.
The members demand an answer from Cyril Ramaphosa about Farmgate, rightly so, but they and the president don’t respect the institution.
At one point, I had to lie down on the sofa and listen to my laptop at a safe distance. I drifted into an unpleasant revelry whereby I was at a children’s party, locked in a small room full of sugar-infused five-year-olds. I then realised that I wasn’t dreaming; I was wide awake and it was the South African national legislature at work.
Try it for yourself: I dare you. But please have a strong snifter or two first.
The United Kingdom’s house of commons is not always exemplary in its collective conduct. But, compared with this farce, the weekly duel between the prime minister and the leader of the opposition is a masterpiece of political accountability. Sigh.
Far away in Pretoria, I presume that the president had also taken the opportunity to get his head down for a bit of shut-eye. He looked like he needed some sleep. He could barely keep his eyes open as he waffled dully through the first 10 questions. It may explain why he was able to keep a straight face when he responded to a supplementary question about his minister of police by duly confirming that he has full confidence in Bheki Cele’s ability to get on top of crime in the country — notwithstanding the mountain of evidence to the contrary.
Apparently Ramaphosa has given up on reality. He no longer cares whether there is a gaping chasm between what he says and the objective lived reality of South African society.
The worst thing that one can say about the session was that it was reminiscent of the dark days of the Zuma presidency when the King of Nkandla would sit down and chuckle as the reprobates in parliament fought among themselves, some of them baying “pay back the money”.
Now it is Ramaphosa, the supposed reformer, who sticks two fingers up at the institution that elected him to high office, to whom he is supposed to be accountable. Looking them straight in the eye — well, his laptop camera — he said he was cooperating with all the investigating agencies and is on standby to provide them with a full explanation.
But not parliament. Or the public. Because that would be an inappropriate breach of due process.
Again with a straight face.
So he must have something to hide. Perhaps this is not the case. But the only reasonable and logical conclusion to arrive at is that if he didn’t have anything to hide he would offer a public explanation. Why else not?
His attorney, Peter Harris, is a savvy, gnarled veteran of the world of political lawfare. His relationship with the president goes back to the 1980s. Ramaphosa trusts him and his advice implicitly and, legally, probably for good reason.
Perhaps even politically, if one takes “December” as the measure of what matters most — a second term as ANC president and of the country.
This is a microcosm of everything that is wrong with the Ramaphosa presidency. Instead of acting on anything resembling principle, the president’s political lodestar is what will keep him alive in the cauldron of ANC internal politics, and thus not harm his prospects of re-election as ANC president at the organisation’s December five-yearly national conference.
Nearly everything significant is achieved through stealth or by flying under the radar. The toughest decisions are subcontracted out, or subjected to bewilderingly over-complicated processes that defuse the risk but delay the decision.
Meanwhile, Ramaphosa tries to be all things to all people.
So, the calculation with Phala Phala is this: “All I have to do is get to December without anything too serious getting out.” And, because the investigations are unlikely to have been concluded by then, let alone reached the stage of charging him, Ramaphosa figures that he can easily ride it out by playing a straight bat to all public questions on the topic, praying in aid his devotion to due process.
No doubt, Harris’s (perfectly sound legal) advice is textbook: limit what you say now in public to reduce the possibility of inconsistency being picked up later.
Again, it implies that there is something worth hiding.
But there may not be. At most, the transgressions of law or rules may be relatively minor, and may easily be disposed of, legally speaking. But Ramaphosa doesn’t want to give his opponents any ammunition to work with. He knows that his supporters are steadfast and that they have bought into the doctrine of Ramaphosian Exceptionalism — that it is Ramaphosa, and Ramaphosa alone, who stands between South Africa and the barbarians at the gate.
One should not forget that the Phala Phala story broke almost exactly at the time of the 50-year anniversary of Watergate.
As a diplomat friend pointed out, it may yet become a “class example of how to magnify a crisis by seeking to hide from it”, adding that “it is incredible how many powerful people just prolong what could have been a minor pain by refusing to accept a measurement of reasonable critique at the beginning of a scandal”.
Indeed. This is the risk Ramaphosa takes. For him, and his attorney, it’s an easy calculation. The risks on the other side are far greater because the ANC and its quixotic electoral college matter more than the minor constitutional consideration of accountability to parliament let alone being straight with the country.
Once again, Ramaphosa falls into the trap of thinking that politically the ANC matters more. In the end, it will bring him down.
Richard Calland is an associate professor in public law at UCT. His new book, The Presidents: From Mandela to Ramaphosa, Leadership In the Age of Crisis, is co-authored with Mabel Sithole and will be published late next month by PenguinRandomHouse.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Mail & Guardian.
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