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So there we were last Thursday, sitting in the gallery of the National Assembly dressed up for the occasion. Let me just state for the record that my whole outfit (excluding my old pair of shoes) cost R300, which is a far cry from the R70 000 outfit which one of our ministers reportedly bought at Versace.
Of course we always knew that the EFF was going to make trouble. They were openly saying in the days before that they were going to disrupt the speech and would continue to raise points of order until they were thrown out. Their modus operandi was clear: create mayhem and then get thrown out with as much violence as possible to get maximum media attention.
The government and Parliament reacted. The areas in and surrounding Parliament felt far more like a military zone in Gaza than a parliament of the people. There were police and soldiers everywhere. Helicopters hovered overhead and concrete barricades blocked off the roads close to the parliamentary precinct.
