National Assembly Cape Town: 6 September 2007  

Madame Speaker, 

First of all I would like to thank the Presiding Officers for scheduling this debate well in advance of the IPU's 117th Assembly in October in Geneva, Switzerland. This topic will be the subject of a panel discussion in October and will then be debated further at the IPU's 118th Assembly in April 2008. 

The main objective of today's debate is to arrive at a common departure point for the South African Parliament when it participates in the Assembly in October. We'll be going there not as individual political parties, but as a collective delegation from our Parliament. 

The world in 2007 is an infinitely more dangerous and unstable place than the world of twenty, thirty years ago. The end of the balance achieved by two competing superpowers has lead to the rise of more dictatorships, totalitarian regimes, wars, ethnic and religious conflicts and ultimately the rise of international terrorism.  

As a result, democracy has come under sustained attack and in many parts of the world, it has gone backwards rather than forwards. In addition, human rights and individual freedoms have also come under attack, and even in the established democracies a steady erosion of human rights and freedoms in the face of a greater perceived need for national security is apparent. This is even more so in those democracies that are targets for international terrorism.   

In some instances, these democracies have responded with national security measures that many consider to be anti-democratic and anti-freedom, but they have been able to convince their publics that some freedoms must be curtailed in order to protect the security of the state and nation. 

This is not a new dilemma for democracies: the need for a trade-off between national security and human rights and freedoms is almost a given whenever democracies have come under attack. But, herein also lies a contradiction.

Those democracies that have struck the optimum balance between these competing needs have survived and grown, while those that have erred on the side of repressive national security measures have experienced more problems and instability, and even erosion of fundamental democratic values. 

What then is the role of parliaments in finding this balance? It is the traditional role of parliaments through the ages to act as a check on the state's powers and the potential abuse of its powerful position. In this case, it is the same. Parliaments must act as a watchdog to see that human rights and freedoms are not abused or repressed by the state and government in the pursuit of national security, which can often mean one thing to a parliamentarian and another to a member of the executive. 

Parliaments must execute this oversight responsibility vigorously as representatives of the people for it is those people that will be hurt most by an executive that is overzealous in the pursuit of national security.

Parliaments must therefore closely question members of the executive on their national security plans and intentions and not accept half-baked answers, but insist on openness and transparency. Parliaments should also use their powers to block executive action if it is felt that this could endanger human rights and individual freedoms. This could be done by refusing to pass national security legislation or withholding funding in those parliaments that have these powers. 

In conclusion, Madame Speaker 

The dangerous times we live in necessitate stronger measures to maintain national and human security, but this can never be done at the expense of fundamental human rights and individual freedoms. To do that would be to start the process of erosion of democracy. It is the role of parliaments to ensure that this does not happen. 

Thank you.