South Africans have taken to exercising their freedom of speech like ducks to water. And nowhere is the freedom of speech freer than in parliament. Members of Parliament can defame, insult and swear at each other but nothing said in parliament can be the subject of legal action outside the legislature.
Our parliamentary debate ranges from polite, boring and anguished to aggressive, insulting, humorous and sarcastic. The quality is generally poor.
We have become used to the smart, funny, disruptive yet sometimes apposite comments from the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF).
But in its response to the President’s State of the Nation address, the EFF crossed a line.
Mosiuoa “Terror” Lekota, the leader of the Congress of the People party (Cope), addressed the house in response to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s undertaking to realise the African National Congress’s (ANC) December conference resolution to pursue “Expropriation without Compensation”. In his State of the Nation Address Ramaphosa had stated that the approach of making "more land available to our people for cultivation" would include the expropriation of land without compensation. He added: "We are determined that this process of restoring land to our people should be implemented in a way that increases agricultural production, improves food security and ensures that agriculture becomes a growing sector of our economy." (My emphases)