As one diplomat at the Cape Town City Hall remarked in comparing the State of the Union address delivered the day before by Joe Biden with Cyril Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation Address (Sona), the US president spoke to people, Ramaphosa to numbers and figures.

The contrast was indeed stark. Ramaphosa was once a charismatic trade union leader. He should be able to connect with ordinary people. His speech, however, sounded more like a CEO speaking to a board of directors and corporate shareholders in a text prepared by the company accountant.

By the time most people had fallen asleep or, as was the case at City Hall, dived on to their cellphones, mention of Nelson Mandela and the values of the Constitution was made, but it was too little, too late.

The speech was a case study of how not to connect to the people suffering the most from political failure.

And this observation, leaving aside the content of the speech, was no better: we will now have five ministers of energy – ministers of energy, public enterprises, cooperative governance (as a result of the declaration of the State of Disaster), finance and a brand-new minister of electricity.

When in chaos, simply create more structures.

State of Disaster

And then there was the declaration of a State of Disaster. It may be legally possible to bring the Eskom crisis into the definition of disaster as set out in the act, but neither the President nor anyone else in government has explained why available legislation cannot be employed and what additional powers the declaration gives to address the problem.

It hands vast powers to a minister who, judging by a previous vote, thinks the President should face impeachment proceedings.

It does appear that, flushed with “triumph” over the handling of Covid-19, the government prefers unfettered power over parliamentary control of executive action.

In summary, no justification has been offered as to how this deviation from parliamentary control of executive power will, in any way, contribute to the alleviation of the electricity crisis.

EFF threat to democracy

The President’s speech was not the worst reflection of the state of the nation. Even by its usual standard of contempt for Parliament and its procedures, the EFF exceeded itself with its conduct.

A number of self-appointed experts in criminal law have pontificated about the EFF not having committed a crime in that their design was to stand on the stage waving their posters.

The crime of sedition is, however, rather broad. Sedition is defined as “conduct or speech inciting people to rebel against the authority of a state or monarch” (as borrowed from English law). 

From the attempt to rush the stage, albeit that some were armed with posters, it is possible that it could be so argued. In the context of the manner in which the stage was stormed, however, and with the clear intention of inciting opposition to the authority of the President in the manner in which they so did, an assessment of possible criminal charges is a closely run call.

What is surely clear is that Parliament has to discipline these EFF members of the National Assembly. Fascist-based intolerance to the conduct in Parliament, with the obvious intention of preventing the President from delivering the State of the Nation Address, has no place in a constitutional democracy.

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And that focuses attention on other players who abysmally fail to see the danger of the EFF to a future of democracy in this country.

Sections of the media appeared to be more interested in Julius Malema’s protestation about his right to speak being violated. They glided over his party’s clear threat to the viability of constitutional democracy were his party ever to gain power which, with a ceiling of around 10% of the electorate, is only possible with the connivance of the ANC.

Yet again, sections of the media showed how ill-serving they are in defence of constitutional democracy.

That Malema can seek to threaten the leader of the ANC in the manner of the EFF conduct at the opening of Parliament only compounds the experience of the ruling party in its collusion with the EFF in a range of Gauteng-based municipalities: “Do not worry about our contempt for your national leader so long as we can share the spoils of municipal government,   appears to be a call that holds great attraction for sections of the ANC.” 

It also serves as a warning as to how the ANC may sell out the constitutional dream of 1994 in favour of shared spoils with the EFF in 2024, no matter what the national leader of the ANC may say or the treatment to which he is subjected by the EFF.

Steenhuisen aims at wrong target

And then there was the leader of the DA, the helpless John Steenhuisen, a politician with the remarkable ability to invariably say the right thing at the wrong time. While he had a point that security forces brought firearms into the chamber of Parliament which is clearly disturbing, in the context of the thuggish conduct of members of the EFF, the smart line to have taken was to demand that sanctions be instituted as a result of the crude attack on Parliamentary procedure, thereby asserting the importance of debate in the House and thus the country. But no. Mr Steenhuisen was looking down the wrong periscope.

As a consequence, the 2023 Sona was revealed in all its disturbing failures by the conduct of all of these key role players on the night of 9 February. If the aspiration of constitutional democracy held by Nelson Mandela and most of the nation in those dreamily hopeful days of 1994 is to convert into reality, the gulf between those aspirations and the current political discourse and conduct needs to be closed with all due speed. DM