Red Alert
BID TO Paralyse Parliament: No different to Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party in the Reichstag, and just look how all that ended up
What is going on in South Africa's Parliament?
Let me begin with a detour into history, perhaps it will help to provide some perspective. In 1928, a year after its banning had been lifted, the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) contested elections for the German parliament, the Reichstag. This was during the period of the democratic Weimar Republic. The NSDAP (better known as the Nazis) received less than 3 percent of the vote, winning just 12 seats out of a total of 491. The Social Democrats were the largest party with 153 seats. The Communists won 54 seats. A range of centrist and centre-right parties held the balance of power.
The Nazis were undeterred by their low vote. Having members in the Reichstag was an important bridge-head for their ruthless agenda. They declined to behave like a regular parliamentary party. Their MPs wore boots and uniforms in the house and, according to one account, "conducted themselves as a storm troop unity."
The same source records that: "Whenever representatives of the government or the other democratic parties spoke, the Nazi members marched out in a body in studied contempt of the speaker, or entered in a body to interrupt the speaker, thus making it physically impossible for the Reichstag President to maintain order. In the case of speakers of other parties, the Nazi members constantly interrupted, often resorting to lengthy and spurious parliamentary manoeuvres, with the result the schedule of the session was thrown out of order."