Dear friends and fellow South Africans,
Is the ANC really about to square up to the National Assembly and declare its will sovereign above the highest legislative body in our land? It seems that may be the case.
Yesterday the parliamentary caucus of the ruling party held an emergency caucus to decide how to deal with the motion tabled jointly by the IFP and seven opposition parties in Parliament, calling for a vote of no confidence in President Jacob Zuma.
Following that meeting, the ANC issued a statement declaring that the motion of no confidence will “never see the light of day”.
This flies in the face of the fact that the National Assembly is required by the Constitution to process the motion. There is no question as to the legitimacy of the motion. It was tabled in the correct manner, by the correct people, in the correct forum. And it has the backing of almost all political parties represented in Parliament, bar the ANC.
The ANC, which often quotes “the will of the people” when it needs to justify, defend or promote its own actions, likes to pretend that the President is elected “by the people” and therefore serves at the behest of the people. But that is not the case. In terms of the Constitution, the President is elected by the National Assembly, and serves at the pleasure of the National Assembly.
It is logical then that the Members of the National Assembly should have confidence in and trust the President. But when that is brought into question, the Constitution provides for a vote of no confidence. If it is supported by the majority of Members, the President must resign.
It is not simply the President’s job at stake, though. With him, the Deputy President and the entire Cabinet would need to resign. There is thus more at stake here for the ANC than the position of one man.
Thus their determination that the motion should never see the light of day.
By that, they mean that it should not be placed on the Order Paper for debate in the National Assembly.
But in terms of the Constitution, the National Assembly is the appropriate venue in which to determine whether the President still enjoys the confidence of the representatives of the people.
As the representatives of the people, we in the National Assembly are expressing your voice, your concerns and your shaken confidence in the capacity of our President to lead South Africa successfully. When you raised your voices over the textbook dumping saga, we heard. When you lamented the spread of endemic corruption, we heard. When you protested over rising unemployment and the weakening of our economy, we heard.
We took all we heard and acknowledged that the leadership of this country has failed. The ANC, on the other hand, took what it heard and buried its head deeper into the sand. Thus we rose, as the opposition, and expressed your voice where it could make a fundamental difference; in the National Assembly.
Section 42(3) of the Constitution declares that, “The National Assembly is elected to represent the people and to ensure government by the people under the Constitution. It does this by choosing the President, by providing a national forum for public consideration of issues, by passing legislation and by scrutinizing and overseeing executive action.”
The ANC is therefore wrong to try to prevent our confidence in the President from being measured, for fear that he will fail the test. Surely our President and his Cabinet must be held accountable. The Constitution requires it, and the citizens of our country demand it.
That is where the ANC has again misjudged. This motion has already seen the light of day. It is already out there in the public discourse, being debated and mulled over, and, as this continues, support is growing for the test to be taken by our President. Is the ANC worried about the ABZ campaign – “Anyone But Zuma”?
There is certainly space on the parliamentary programme to debate this motion in the National Assembly. This year’s programme has been one of the lightest I have seen for many years. The Programming Committee has no justifiable reason to refuse to place this debate on the Order Paper.
If it does the right and constitutionally required thing, it will open the way for the representatives of the people to represent the will of the people. For this reason we have asked that the vote by done by secret ballot, so that every Member of the National Assembly can vote according to their conscience and free will, and according to their own confidence in a failed President.
This is of critical importance, for we have walked this path once before when a motion of no confidence was voted on in the National Assembly. There were two major procedural flaws in that instance, neither of which has ever been corrected.
The first was that the vote was conducted by open ballot, even though the Constitution requires that the President be elected by secret ballot, suggesting that ongoing confidence in the President should be measured in the same way.
The second was that, after extensive debate and immediately before the vote, the motion of no confidence was amended to become a motion of confidence, which had not been tabled in the National Assembly up to that point and had not been debated.
This violated both the Constitution and the Rules of the National Assembly.
Yet it happened.
So it is that we wait to see whether the ANC will again try to impose its will over the constitutionally mandated body that expresses your confidence, or lack thereof, in the President of our country.
Yours in the service of our nation,
Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi MP