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I beg to differ with the people who are criticising Agang SA for withdrawing its motion of no confidence in president Jacob Zuma at an eleventh-hour after a speaker, Baleka Mbete, who is also an ANC chairperson, had refused to rescue herself from presiding over the matter. In fact, from a different perspective, Agang SA had won, and the democracy had lost on the day.
In a broader context, this has laid it bare that ours is nothing but a pseudo-democracy on two fronts. First, during the election of both the president and speaker, a chief justice presides, or can designate a particular judge to do so on his/her behalf, over the proceedings. T
his begs the question: Why he does not preside over the motion of no confidence in either the president or the speaker? This amounts to a pseudo-democracy that plays itself out in the National Assembly (NA), one of the two houses of the parliament.
When voting for the president and the speaker, the MPs use a secret ballot system. This begs the question: Why the same system is not being used when the motion of no confidence is passed in them? This also amounts to a pseudo-democracy, which is, in a broader context, in line with and benefits the ANC’s use of its majority in the NA to flout the parliamentary processes in a constitutional democracy.
Simply put, in a constitutional democracy, the ANC cannot injudiciously use its majority to forge ahead with or adopt any resolution that falls outside the sphere of constitutionalism because the court would nullify it, as a cape Town High Court Judge Dannis Davis had done in the case that involved the suspensions of the EFF’s members, whom the NA had found them guilty of various charges for disrupting Zuma’s question-time session on 21 August 2014.
Judge Davis, granting the EFF an urgent relief it had sought pending the constitutionality of the matter itself, pointed out the NA had failed to take into account a “democratic imperative that the party derives its 6.4 per cent constituency.
Even if Agang SA had forged ahead with its proposed motion, it would not have served a noble cause other than raising the high blood pressure levels of some MPs to have a go at each other in order to grab the prime news headlines. In the end, it would have been a biggest loser.
The problem does not necessarily lie with the two-thirds majority or a 50 per cent threshold to remove Zuma, but the foregoing constitutional imbalance. Once a court can order the NA to use a secret ballot paper system, the motion would serve a noble cause.
For example, an EFF chief whip Floyd Shivambu pointed out during the debate in the NA on their disciplinary hearing, some ANC MPs wanted to vote in their favour, but only through the secret ballot system, as they feared for reprisal or being purged because the party doesn’t trust its members.
