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#Sona2015: What a bloody shocking flouting of constitutional principles!

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Gushwell F. Brooks is an LLB graduate from the University of the Witwatersrand. He did not go on to become an attorney, but much rather entered the corporate rat race. After slaving away for years, he found his new life as a talk show host for Talk Radio 702 and 567 Cape Talk.

The State of the Nation Address is an extremely important annual event. It is not just bad fashion and the opening of parliament, but also an opportunity for the executive, embodied by President Jacob Zuma, to tell us what they will do for the nation in the coming year. The legislature will spend the next 12 months debating these policies and plans and turning them into enabling legislation.

Last year we had the misfortune of 11 important pieces of legislation failing to reach the House for debate by the time parliament was supposed to go into recess. It must also be noted that the president failed to appear the required four times in front of parliament during 2014, all because of that looming question that finds its origins in the public protector’s report on Nkandla, “When will the money be paid back?”

So this question was the elephant in the room, the very obese, smelly – ever smelt an elephant fart? – and blatantly visible elephant. However, three very important questions were raised in the hour and two minutes preceding the president’s salutations, recognitions and eventual speech. Who was responsible for the signal blockage that prevented anyone from being able to use their mobile phones within the National Assembly and who were the armed individuals that escorted members of the legislature out, at the express instruction of speaker, Baleka Mbete?

The first question is an important one; some might argue that it is the question that defines this presidency and its ability to provide a semblance of effective, honest governance, but it is not the only question. As important as the question around the president’s accountability for Nkandla is, the question unfortunately sidelined many other questions during the course of last year’s parliamentary sessions.

This question re-emerged as the president kicked of his lengthy salutations that introduce the Sona. Madam Speaker clearly kept her eye on the Economic Freedom Fighter’s website and the news media, because she ‘knew’ that the EFF were there to disrupt the President’s address with their questions. Sadly, her gut feel is insufficient as a justification for their expulsion. A very specific question was asked by the parliamentarians; their argument was that they were raising a point of privilege as opposed to a point of order and felt that they could address questions.

Whether they have legal standing or not is not in issue; what is a damn shame is the fact that Madam Speaker failed to answer this question in terms of the rules. If there was any attempt at a decent reason why this joint sitting of parliament could not permit questions to the president, it came from farm owner and chairperson of the National Council of Provinces, Thandi Modise.

But the first question on paying back the money did not pose the biggest Constitutional quandary; it was the question that was raised before the President even cleared his throat. Why the hell was there a signal jamming device of some sorts that prevented anyone to use their mobile phones in the House? Live tweeting is an essential part of what a media practitioner does in the 21st century.

The people that were granted media passes to sit in the House are savvy and professional enough to ensure that their phones are on silent and don’t become disruptive while the president speaks and since those provided with press passes and all the guests have been security cleared, it can be safely assumed that they will not use their devices to plot an assassination. Parliament is supposed to be an open space, a place where there are no holy cows and nothing is hidden from the public.

Clearly someone somewhere wanted to clamp down on what we were to see coming out of parliament, carefully choreographing and orchestrating the parliamentary feed, it being the only live broadcast of what was happening in the House. Mbete was right on one thing, we all expected that first question to be the bone of contention, what the nation was waiting for was how would the House deal with the matter. Since basic Constitutional tenets were flouted, it made sense to keep that out of the public eye. The jamming device was subsequently deactivated, but it is extremely disconcerting that it happened in the first place. Who is to be held to account? According to Mbete, the secretary will look into that one.

Farfetched conspiracy theory is not my thing, but you really start to wonder when we kick proceedings off with a mysterious jamming signal that needs to be switched off and then when the EFF raise the Nkandla question and they are expelled from parliament, the parliament feed fixed our gaze on Mbete and Modise. What we were prevented from seeing was the scuffles with armed individuals that summarily removed parliamentarians. To cast your mind back to the Oscar Pistorius murder trial, the first televised South African trial, the court had provided the live televised feed, with good cause. Witnesses preferring to keep their identities out of the public domain had the right to not have their faces broadcast. Parliament, where they provide a televised feed, is a place of openness and transparency; there is no argument for why we need a limited view of what is occurring in the House. However, those like myself who were forced to watch the live televised broadcast of the State of the Nation Address were deliberately prevented from seeing what was going on during this expulsion.

The last question raised by parliamentary leader of the opposition, Mmusi Maimane, is of utmost importance; the separation of powers is a paramount tenet of Constitutionalism. What keeps a very fragile democracy like ours in check is a separation of powers between the three arms of the state; the judiciary, the executive and the legislature.

So when the president addresses parliament, he is not the big boss but, as head of the executive, on equal terms with the legislative body. It is for parliament to enforce its own rules, hence their own specialised security services. It is not for the police, who are part of the executive, to expel supposedly erring parliamentarians. They are part of the president’s team in the statutory game, so it can’t be argued that they merely maintained order, but much rather that they were his henchmen, appointed to boot out anyone that made life uncomfortable for the president.

Whether the parliamentarians were rightly expelled is not in issue: the important issue is, who booted them out? The State of the Nation Address for 2015 was a damned disgrace. The poppycock did not come from the EFF’s disruption, but from a blatant state and party sponsored obfuscation of what actually happened in parliament and a deliberate flouting of the right to freedom of expression. The second issue is that a leg of the executive intervened in parliament, which is unacceptable in terms of the separation of powers. It is thus a fair question Maimane asked: when does the military intervene?

Lastly, Mbete’s performance as, what is supposed to be, an unimpassioned and largely neutral Speaker of the House, is appalling. Her justification as to why she would not allow questions failed directly to address questions raised in terms of the rules by parliamentarians. Despite us knowing what the EFF’s plan was, it was unbecoming for Mbete to shoot down Malema by telling him that she knew what he was going to say. The argument that Mbete is unable to cast her political party colours aside when she convenes as Speaker of the National Assembly is gaining strength when her protection of the president flouts paramount constitutional principles such as freedom of expression and the separation of powers. Despite the president being able to tell us that he has a good story to tell because we are exporting apples to China, this State of the Nation Address 2015 was a damned disgrace. DM

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