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On Thursday, August 19, members of the South African National Assembly met physically for the first time in a long time. They have gathered in several places in parliament to achieve sufficient distance in the pandemic. And there was only one item on the Order Paper: the election of a Speaker.
This was duly done and the former defense minister, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, was elected to the office.
The President in South Africa presides over debates in the National Assembly. They are also the titular head of parliament as a whole, including the National Council of Provinces. The president is elected by a majority of the members of the assembly and can be dismissed in the same way.
The president is responsible for providing political leadership and strategic direction to the National Assembly. And they should do it in a non-partisan way.
Why was this temperature control important to the state of health of South African constitutional democracy?
This question must be answered in the context of the entrenched identity politics that characterizes the country’s long history of racial oppression and its relatively recent overthrow. It would therefore have been unrealistic in the early years of democracy to expect conscientious adherence to the unwritten rules and the conventional spirit which should ideally prevail in parliament. But it was expected that this goal would be gradually achieved.
Indeed, those who held the post immediately after the country’s first democratic elections in 1994 did so with distinction. However, for most of the past 15 years, the president has been both weak and partisan, and was responsible for allowing the executive, especially that of former president Jacob Zuma, to behave in the dark. in a way that brought the government into disrepute.
The election of the new president was therefore an important moment for the ruling African National Congress (ANC) to show that it was moving away from its “lost years” under Zuma.
He failed the test. The elevation of Mapisa-Nqakula to this important constitutional position reflects extremely poorly the leadership of the party. This contrasts sharply with President Cyril Ramaphosa’s oft-stated commitment to uncorrupted governance and the values of the constitution.
A brief history of the role
The title given to the highest authority in parliament originated in the English parliament in the late 1300s. It went on to describe the person who “spoke” on behalf of the monarch. After the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688, the Speaker became the Speaker of the House of Commons.
South Africa inherited this function and title as a former British colony, along with almost every other member of the Commonwealth.
Any legislature needs someone to preside over its deliberations, manage and administer support services, oversee the exercise of discipline among its members, and represent it in discussions with the executive and judicial branches of government.
Various approaches are taken towards the impartiality and independence of the office of the President.
In the United Kingdom, an MP is elected president immediately after a general election. The person is usually a member of the ruling party, but does not have to be. Once elected, the MP ceases to be a member of the party caucus.
In the United States, the Speaker of the House of Representatives is drawn from the upper ranks of the majority party in the lower house of Congress. They play a partisan role, balanced with a certain fair play towards all members of the house.
Most other national constitutions place their equivalent of the Speaker between these two approaches.
What the job involves
As stated on the Parliament website, the responsibilities of the Speaker include:
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preserve parliamentary integrity and the decorum of the House,
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ensure the smooth running of legislative work and the functioning of committees,
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preside impartially and maintain order.
The President represents Parliament as a whole. Their responsibilities include ensuring a sufficient budget for its activities, monitoring expenditure and supporting all parliamentarians, and initiating or responding to any litigation before the courts.
With regard to the constitution of South Africa, the President heads the legislative branch of government and must act as its champion at all times, both nationally and internationally. This is particularly the case in its relationship with the executive.
The effective performance of all of these functions requires a highly efficient, dignified, respected and wise Member of Parliament. The experience of the past 27 years has been uneven.
Call for speakers
An exemplary start was made by Frene Ginwala, who served during the first decade of democratic government. She ruled with a firm but fair hand and chaired many initiatives to transform parliament from its apartheid watchdog role to the vision set out in the constitution. Ideally, parliament represents the electorate and also plays an effective role in regulating the exercise of executive power.
Max Sisulu (2009-2014) and more recently Thandi Modise (2019-2021) have largely followed Ginwala’s approach.
Unfortunately, the dual mandate (2004-2008 and 2014-2019) of Baleka Mbete is far from meeting the expectations of the Presidency. Under her leadership, especially during her second term, she was often accused of treating opposition MPs less favorably than government MPs. She was also accused of blocking parliamentary inquiries into the actions of the ruling ANC, in particular Zuma.
Indeed, in May of this year, she testified before the Zondo Commission on State Capture that she ignored the report of an anonymous whistleblower alleging corruption in 2007. And, she said , if she were called upon to decide how to respond to such a report today, she would do it again.
Defective system
The issues surrounding the role of the President in South Africa are rooted in the autocratic racism of our past. The capacity to transcend it is eroded by the electoral system and by the organizing principle of the ANC.
The party list proportional representation model means that only loyal party members will be elected to any legislature in the country. This leads to the tendency to put the interests of the parties ahead of those of the country.
This is considerably aggravated by the “democratic centralist” base on which the ANC is modeled. This approach maintains that a certain degree of disagreement and debate is tolerated in closed party meetings, but that once a decision or policy is adopted by a majority, every party member must adhere without criticism. to this line.
The consequences for any President are obvious.
By definition, someone who is appointed President will be a senior official of the ruling party, steeped in its history, culture and traditions. This is unacceptably reinforced when the president remains a member of the party bureau, as seen with Mbete, who was the national president of the ANC while he was president.
Mapisa-Nqakula was elected president after being sacked from the cabinet after an indiscriminate period of 15 years as cabinet minister in three portfolios. She is herself the subject of an investigation by a committee of Parliament for alleged unethical conduct. And she has been in the spotlight for wrongful and suspect abuse of her authority on several occasions.
The failure of Parliament to hold the Zuma administration to account was graphically illustrated and repeated by the Zondo committee. Given this shockingly delinquent failure by Parliament to fulfill its constitutional obligations, the outlook is bleak at best for the new President tolerant, let alone initiating more active and effective oversight over the next few years.
Temperature control reveals a failing public governance system, unable to shed the burdens of the past.
Hugh Corder is Emeritus Professor of Public Law at UCT. It received funding from the National Research Foundation of South Africa. He is director of Freedom under Law and a member of the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution.
By Hugh Corder, Professor of Public Law, University of Cape Town
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