Baleka must go

16 September 2014

Note to Editors: This speech was delivered by DA Parliamentary Leader Mmusi Maimane MP, during the debate on the Motion of No Confidence in the Speaker, Honourable Baleka Mbete.

Speaker,

Honourable Members,

South Africans,

Bagaetso, Dumelang.

Our Parliament should be the pride of our nation. It is here where we should debate our differences, and set a course for a brighter future for all our people. 

Parliament should be an example for other nations. They should look to us as an exemplary democracy; a country with functional institutions; a country where everyone has a voice in this chamber and the powerful come to answer difficult questions directly. 

So today I call on all Members of this House to support a motion of no confidence in the Speaker of the House, the Honourable Baleka Mbete.

With the Chairperson of the ANC as Speaker, we cannot have an effective Parliament. 

Let me be clear: This motion is not personal. This is not about Baleka Mbete. Honourable Mbete is a competent member of this House. She is a former Deputy President. She has her flaws, but we respect her as an experienced politician.  

This motion is about the office she holds in the ANC, and what that means to hold the Office of Speaker.

She cannot serve as a leader of the ANC, and a neutral Speaker in the House. The conflict of interest is untenable.  

Parliament can only work when the Speaker puts country before party. 

And this is the honest truth, Honourable Members:

The ANC knows that it is losing public support every single day. 

It loses votes election after election. 

President Zuma is more unpopular than ever before.

The ship that is Zuma's ANC is slowly sinking. 

And Luthuli House is deploying every means to slow down the sinking of the ship. 

We see this playing out every day in Parliament. Honourable Baleka Mbete has been deployed here to make sure President Zuma doesn't have to answer tough questions in Parliament. In so doing, she is placing her party before our country. 

When Speaker Mbete hires former ANC MPs to offices in Parliament that are supposed to be independent, she is placing party before country. 

When Speaker Mbete allows the security cluster to militarise Parliamentary security to intimidate opposition MPs, she is placing party before country. 

When Speaker Mbete holds an ANC rally inside the precinct of Parliament, as she did this afternoon, she is placing party before country.

And when Speaker Mbete covers for the President during a tough question session, she is placing party before country. 

But we all knew that Honourable Baleka Mbete came to Parliament with her mind already made up to protect the President.

While campaigning for President Zuma earlier this year, the honourable Mbete said, and I quote:  

"A lot was clarified, in fact, by Thuli's report. She then goes on to say a few things which, in our view, are actually debatable because in the African tradition you don't interfere with a man's kraal. The issue of a man's kraal or a kraal of a family is a holy space. And Thuli says: ‘No, they benefited and therefore President Zuma ought to think of paying some money'. We beg to differ very strongly, very, very strongly."

Honourable Members, the Speaker came here with her mind made up. She think President Zuma should not pay back any money in Nkandla. She thinks the Public Protector is wrong. She thinks the Public Protector can be ignored!

She came here not as an honest referee, but as a player for Zuma's ANC. She has sold out this Parliament to her masters at Luthuli House. 

And like everything else with the ANC, she willing to sacrifice it all to protect one man from being held accountable. 

Make no mistake - every lever of power is being used to protect President Zuma from answering questions on Nkandla and the hundreds of charges of corruption against him.

In Parliament, Honourable Baleka Mbete protects him.

Outside Parliament, the ANC at large, like Honourable Kebby Maphatsoe, attacks the Public Protector and undermines the Constitution. 

At the SABC, Hlaudi Motsoeneng is deployed to try to shield the President from becoming even more unpopular than he already is.

It is all part of the ANC agenda to protect President Zuma at all costs.

So we sit with a Speaker who fights for one man, and not for Parliament or for South Africa. 

During Honourable Mbete's tenure as Speaker of the Fifth Parliament, South Africa has seen unprecedented events, which have brought his House to a shameful state.

The Speaker has been unable to maintain order in the House on numerous occasions. The result has been that the important work of Parliament has been reduced to a slinging match of spurious points of order, which on many instances have been ruled on in a biased manner. The rules are not being equally applied.

Unfortunately, just like the Speaker brings the Luthuli House agenda into this House, so I expect the ANC speakers today to do the same thing.

Indeed members of the ANC will come to this podium after me, and will blindly sing the praises of Baleka Mbete, as a comrade cadre of the movement - none of which will contradict the most serious facts of bias and unfitness I have highlighted in this opening.

The emblem of Parliament carries the motto "We, the People", this is why I emphasize the point of the House being an institution which works for the people of South Africa, not for Luthuli House. Nowhere does the line "We, the ANC" feature on Parliament's emblem, Honourable Members.

We cannot allow our parliamentary democracy to regress. We have seen in the past days what regression looks like, within our very borders, in the Kingdom of Lesotho. No! We cannot allow our parliamentary democracy to regress!

It is unfortunate that Parliament has come to this. 

If the ANC respected Parliament and the Constitution, we would never have had a biased Speaker in the first place.

If the ANC in Parliament was committed to holding the executive to account, we would have a Speaker that doesn't block difficult questions to the President.

We deserve a Speaker that is neutral in Parliament; a Speaker that allows vigorous debate; a Speaker that encourages executive oversight; a Speaker that does his or her job well. 

For the sake of a functioning Parliament, I ask that Members on both sides of the House put South Africa first, support a motion of no confidence in Speaker Baleka Mbete. 

Let us all place country before party.

I thank you. 

Statement issued by Mmusi Maimane MP, DA Parliamentary Leader, September 16 2014

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