Silver+Lining,+editorial+on+SACP+discussion+document,+Business+Day

Business Day, Johannesburg, Editorial, 24 May 2006
=The silver lining=

IT IS easy to list the detrimental consequences of the Jacob Zuma fallout on our body politic. One is the virtual paralysis of both the African National Congress (ANC) and key areas of government, as politicians and senior officials wait to see which way the political wind is blowing before doing their jobs. An example is last year’s spy chaos in the National Intelligence Agency.

But the Zuma phenomenon has also resulted in some unintended consequences that may bode well for SA’s democracy.

First, whether Zuma intended this or not, his rebellion has loosened the iron grip of President Thabo Mbeki on the ruling party. Mbeki’s centralising tenure had all but stripped the ANC and its alliance partners of any meaningful role in the making and execution of policy, particularly economic policy. The understanding between an ANC government and the party is that the party would make policy for the government to implement. It hasn’t happened that way.

While that may have meant conventional and even sensible market-friendly policies have held sway, the danger is that their popularity waxes and wanes with Mbeki’s. And he isn’t very popular in the party now.

But the numbing effect of Mbeki’s hold on the party has been reversing since Zuma’s sacking last year. The tingle has returned. A big section of the party rose up, ostensibly to defend Zuma’s “rights”.

An important discussion document released by the South African Communist Party (SACP) last week, on its relationship with the ANC post-1994, must be read against this background. None of the issues raised by the SACP document is new. In fact, four years ago SACP boss Jeremy Cronin was in trouble for speaking out about the “Zanufication” of the ANC. He was pilloried by allies for his views and even absurdly accused of racism by Mbeki’s combatively Africanist ANC.

That the SACP can today speak publicly about the weakening of democratic institutions such as Parliament and the growth of anti-democratic tendencies in the Presidency are marks of the changed climate in the ANC and its alliance. This de-Zanufication is welcome and the SACP document is more than worthy of public debate.

Most important of the party’s critiques its contentions about Parliament. “While we now have representative democratic legislatures, the fact is that the technocratic vanguard state has tended to marginalise Parliament,” it says. That is absolutely correct.

A classic example is the budget. The Congress of South African Trade Unions, an ANC ally and representative of a critical constituency, boycotts Parliament’s budget process and has not made an input to the legislature’s finance committee since 1998. It says it is futile to engage in a process whose outcome is determined solely by the treasury, with Parliament having no power to alter the national budget.

In order to strengthen the institution, the SACP has called for Parliament to pass legislation giving itself the power to amend “money bills”, as stipulated in section 77 of the constitution, which says: “An act of Parliament must provide for a procedure to amend money bills before Parliament.” Why this has not been done, 10 years after the adoption of the constitution, is another sign of the myopic servility to superiors that is a hallmark of the ANC parliamentary caucus.

Our Parliament is indeed a rubber stamp and Mbeki has made it so. The consequences of this unacceptable situation can be seen in such examples as the arms deal and the Sarafina scandal.

SA should engage with these shortcomings in our democracy. The reaction of ANC chief whip Mbulelo Goniwe, who denied there was anything wrong with Parliament in a blustering response, is an example of how not to do it. Parliament, the ANC, and SA must find more creative responses.


 * From: http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/opinion.aspx?ID=BD4A204844**

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