ADRESSS BY
MANGOSUTHU BUTHELEZI, MP
PRESIDENT OF THE INKATHA FREEDOM PARTY

Madam Speaker:

In debating the budget of the Presidency we must evaluate the present role of the Presidency as an institution. As an institution the Presidency is called upon to provide the total stewardship of our country. The Presidency should provide both the detached leadership necessary to balance the unavoidable policy and institutional turmoil as well as the driving force and decision-making within government. In most parliamentary democracies these two roles are separate and placed in two different offices.

Since the beginning of the negotiations process, I have advocated the separation of such two offices. Present circumstances now show how unfortunate it is that our President is both a head of state and the head of government. The problematic nature of this combination is gravely compounded by him being also the executive leader of a political party which requires him to deal with the never-predictable and never-containable but always present crises of politics. This consideration bears no criticism of the incumbent, but under present circumstances highlights the institutional weaknesses of the Presidency.

Because of this situation, in assessing the Presidency, we are forced to make it our business to deal with the political upheaval engulfing the incumbent. It is not just an ANC affair, it is also our problem. Can under the present circumstances the Presidency really fulfil its institutional mission of unifying and leading the country?

I must voice my grave concerns. Not a day passes without the media reporting news or expressing views which undermine the domestic and international stature of the Presidency. Our country is in a lamentable status which is both reflected and compounded by the deteriorating status of our Presidency. No-one should rejoice, nor draw from this tragedy political satisfaction, for this injures our country and future.

In June 2005, the President announced that he was relieving the Deputy President of his duties and functions. On that occasion I stated that the President had no choice but to act in that manner after what was stated about our then Deputy President in the judgement condemning Mr. Schabir Shaik. Any institution is more important than its incumbent, and protecting the dignity of the institution may require scarifying the reputation of the incumbent. The President had to make a hard call and made the right one, but as an institution, the Presidency was unavoidably damaged and scarred in the process.

However, I also pointed out how unfortunate and even unfair it was for our Deputy President to endure a trial by the media without his possibly redeeming day of justice in court. This opportunity was afforded to him when was he was finally charged. As we were waiting for such a time of truth or reckoning, an unfortunate charge of rape was brought against our former Deputy-President. The wheels of justice moved and he was acquitted. Irrespective of anything else, he should be praised for throughout this process making the repeated statement that he believed and relied in the rule of law.

Unfortunate things have happened and around them more unfortunate events have developed testing the Presidency's role in our new Republic. A strange culture, which is not African, has crept into the behaviour of many and has tarnished the Presidency's image. At the same time, many wild ANC cocks have come back to roost in our Republic's yard and the Presidency has been paralysed in dealing with them.

The debate on the succession of the incumbent after the expiry of his term of office concerns the ANC, but the manner in which it is conducted concerns all South Africans as it affects the fabric of our democracy.

During the liberation struggle, I warned against some of the ways in which our struggle was conducted and predicted that their legacy would haunt us long after the day of our emancipation. I warned against spreading a culture of rebellion to make our country ungovernable, especially at the townships level. I predicted that once rebellion becomes the norm, our country would continue to be ungovernable even when run by ourselves. I see signs of this in the behaviour of some of those attacking the Presidency.

The behaviour of some of such people was been deplorable. Some people have justified their conduct on the basis of it being democracy at work.
Yet there is a profound distinction between the dynamics of democracy and bringing the country to the edge of anarchy.

Irresponsible insults thrown at the President by members of the ruling-party show dangers looming on the horizon if the matter is not handled with the caution and dignity it deserves. Disagreements on the Presidency although are acceptable as part of democracy, but they should not include such disgraceful behaviour. We would be deceiving ourselves if we pretend that what has been done and said about the incumbent has left the Presidency unscathed and will not become part of our future institutional life.

There has been a kind of paralysis in reining in those who are responsible for this conduct. This paralysis has recently spread into inaction in the face of a quasi-insurrection outside our own gates of Parliament or in other instances in which innocent people have been murdered in broad daylight for exercising their democratic right not to participate in a strike.

May God save and protect our Republic if these are the political dynamics through which a new President will be raised to power to guide our country. It affects not only the ANC, but indeed the whole of the country if the forging of the new Presidency takes place through the burning of the T-shirt with the President's image in Durban, the creation of chaos and the hurling of insults at the Deputy President in Utrecht, the hurling expletives at the President in Durban, and the widespread chanting swear-words about the President.

It may be paradoxical, but nonetheless it is due and necessary. To protect the dignity and role of the Presidency as an institution, as South Africans, we are duty bound to take strong exception to how the ANC treats the President, who, as head of state, should be above reproach and insult.

The present juncture should also prompt us onto a serene reflection on the merits of separating the offices of head of state from that of head of government, in accordance with our own standing South African tradition. This separation would allow for the head of government to be drawn into possibly acrimonious internal and external political diatribes without that affecting the dignity and balancing role of the head of state.

The ANC should remember that what is good for the goose is good for the gander. If this pattern of behaviour is allowed, any future President, be it Mr Zuma or anyone else, will be exposed to the same forces, unless he or she crushes them under a brutal yoke of autocracy. Therefore, out of today's dark political clouds we may see rising both the spectre of tyranny, as well as that of latent anarchy. We have seen many cases in our continent when these two spectres end up waltzing together in a downward spiral of democratic degeneration.

The ANC may wish to create a lame-duck ANC President before the next ANC presidential elections. Yet, South Africa does not need a lame-duck President as its head of state and head of government for the next three years, while all spheres and levels of government are collapsing in a status generalised paralysis and ineffectiveness.