PRESIDENT JACOB ZUMA'S 2015 SONA, SOUTH AFRICA'S PARLIAMENTARY IMBECILITY AND UNPRESIDENTIAL PARLIAMENTARY GIGGLES: IS SOUTH AFRICA BECOMING "A RENEGADE DEMOCRACY"?

"...a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischief of a faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and conceit result from the form of government itself ; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths." - James Madison, USA Founding Father and Co-Author of The Federalist Papers, Federalist No. 10.

South Africa's State of the Nation Address (SONA) of 12 February 2015, delivered by president Jacob Zuma, and which was widely televised to the nation and to the rest of the African continent, became, to paraphrase James Madison, "...a spectacle of turbulence and contention." During 2015 SONA, there was also "nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual".

The ANC acted in the belief that the EFF is "a weaker party" in parliament, with only 6% of parliament's members, whilst the EFF is convinced that president Jacob Zuma is "an obnoxious individual" who sallies the reputation and standing of our parliament by refusing to account for unauthorized state expenditure on his i'Nkandla home. In addition, the EFF is convinced that the personal security of its members of parliament (MPs) is no more guaranteed by the sanctity of the parliamentary chambers, as their MPs were frog-marched from parliament and some of them physically assaulted by security personnel.

On the other hand, the Democratic Alliance MPs are of the view that the sanctity of the South African Constitution has been endangered by the violation of the "inviolable" principle of the separation of power in a democracy, when security personnel marched into the parliamentary chambers during the 2015 SONA to evict the EFF MPs.

But it is also clear that the pandemonium and anarchy that reigned at the start of 2015 SONA was largely driven by "conceit" on the part of all the parliamentary parties involved. It is the type of mayhem which, with a mature political leadership, could have been averted.

The questions uppermost in the minds of South Africans, who have been deeply saddened, shocked and outraged by the parliamentary shenanigans during 2015 SONA, are: What does the chaos at 2015 SONA say about the health of South Africa's young democracy? What do these scandalous parliamentary events say about "the mischief" of the various party-based parliamentary factions involved in the unbecoming melee?

And most importantly, what do the anarchic events say about the role of our representative parliament as one of the three key pillars of the tripod of our constitutional democracy, alongside the executive and the judiciary? Will our democracy be short in its life? Or will it meet a violent death? Or can it survive the crisis it is today facing, better rejuvenated for the crises of the future? Can our parliamentary democracy be saved?

Can the overwhelming majority of the South African public be freed from the boiling passions, narrow partisan political interests and infantile mischief of our parliamentary factions which have declared open warfare on one another during the start of 2015 SONA?

Can our elected South African national parliament be rescued in time from what Karl Marx, in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, characterised as "demagogic intrigues" and as "...passion without truth and truth without passion; heroes without heroic deeds, and history without events; evolution whose only motive force appears to be the calendar; and evolution that grows tedious through the unending succession of the same tensions and relaxations; contrasts that seem periodically to reach a climax, only to decline without the attainment of a solution; pretentious efforts and philistine dread of a world cataclysm...", which are clearly holding sway in our fifth South African parliament?

I want to submit that 2015 SONA represents the first time in our 20-year old democracy when the South African general public, voters, TV viewers and radio listeners came face to face with the reality of our parliamentary imbecility.

In his seminal work, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Karl Marx famously also stated that:

"For my part, I prove that the class war in France created circumstances and relationships that enabled a grotesque mediocrity to strut about in a hero's garb".

It is becoming increasingly clear that the acute and deepening racism, class, tribalism, xenophobic, ideological and factional contradictions in democratic South Africa today are creating circumstances and relationships which are presenting our elected but deeply fractious fifth national parliament as "a grotesque mediocrity strutting in a hero's garb". The chaos, anarchy, violence, shouting matches, the shoving and pushing, wolf whistling and crude passions at the start of 2015 SONA are proof-positive of the grotesqueness and imbecility into which our parliament has descended.

We have unfortunately reached a sad stage in our democratic parliamentary evolution when we are embarrassed to catch our kids watching parliamentary debates on TV's Parliamentary Channel, whilst we now daily pray that our elected parliamentarians can take time-off and visit kindergarden classes across the length and breadth of our country to learn from our pre-school kids some civic manners and to also learn important lessons from these kindergarden kids about mature resolution of differences and pacific settlement of disputes.

This a good measure as any of how far our national parliament has tumbled from the high esteem we used to hold it in.

The disruption of 2015 SONA is without doubt the lowest mark of our post-apartheid democratic evolution, on par only with the day Dmitri Tsefenda assassinated the Apartheid architect, Hendrik Verwoerd, in the racist white parliament in 1966.

So low a water mark in the evolution of our democracy is the chaos at the start of 2015 SONA that it should make us remember USA president Ronald Reagan's wise words that "one of the great things about America is how smoothly we transfer presidential power..." (Ronald Reagan, An American Life, 1990, page 226).

What do the parliamentary fracas at the start of 2015 SONA say about the possibility of a peaceful transfer of presidential power between say the ruling ANC and the DA, or between the ruling ANC and the EFF, if it ever electorally come to that in the future?

And as we continue to ponder on the possible long term effects of the chaos and anarchy at the start of 2015 SONA, we need to keep in mind another pearl of wisdom from Karl Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte:

"Since 1848 there has been endemic all over the Continent a malady which may be termed ‘parliamentary imbecility'. Those attacked by this disease live in an imaginary world of their own construction, and have no eyes and ears for, no memory or understanding of, the outer world of crude reality. It was characteristic of persons suffering from parliamentary imbecility that the members of the Party of Order...should continue to regard their victories as true victories, and should believe themselves to be hitting the President when they attack his ministers. Actually, they only succeeded to giving him a fresh opportunity for discrediting the Assembly in the eyes of the world".

I am absolutely convinced that both the arch-capitalist, the American James Madison and the European Jewish and arch-Communist, Karl Marx, in their writings, which they have left for posterity, can help us arms ourselves theoretically to make sense of the chaos and anarchy that has descended upon our fifth national parliament.

They can also help us to maybe understand why our elected parliamentary representatives are choosing to turn themselves into such parliamentary imbeciles, as they showed at the start of 2015 SONA.

Let us also hope that the chaos at the start of 2015 SONA can become an opportunity for us to reflect deeper on the form, content, direction and future of our elected parliament in terms of the robust health of our constitutional democracy.

And the less we all, without exception, giggle at the unfortunate turn of events in our fifth national parliament, the better for our common democratic future.

Isaac Mpho Mogotsi is Founder and Executive Chairman of Centre of Economic Diplomacy in Africa (CEDIA).

This article first appeared on the CEDIA blog here.

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