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Remember how, in the dying days of Thabo Mbeki’s presidency, usually timid ANC MPs began to find their voices?
Where they would routinely howl down members of the opposition and defend ministers against tough questions, they were now actively participating in the grilling.
The public lapped up this new approach, which energised the House, the majority of whose members were accustomed to marching to the beat set by their Luthuli House bosses.
However, this was short-lived. As soon as Jacob Zuma took over the presidency, the ANC caucus was back to its toadying ways.
They looked on while he plundered the nation’s coffers, hollowed out the state and soiled our morality.
But they did not just look on – they attacked those who tried to hold him to account.
Towards the end of Zuma’s time in office, there was another gust of fresh air. No longer so fearful of Zuma, the MPs began flexing their muscles.
They took on his errant ministers, summoning them to committees and giving them as hard a time as the opposition members were.
(Talking about Zuma’s errant ministers, where the heck is Mosebenzi Zwane? While following the story of the pastor who claims to have the power to bring the dead back to life, this lowly newspaperman wondered whether Zwane is actually a zombie who had been similarly resuscitated.)
Anyway, this display of boldness by MPs made minsters and individuals linked to state capture sweat buckets.
Again, South Africans were duped into believing that Parliament was becoming a place where MPs served the people and not the party bosses.
This was also short-lived. As soon as Zuma was out of office and a new man moved in, the good comrades went back to what they knew best – bowing obsequiously before the gods of Luthuli House.
Toeing the party line is not unique to the ANC, South Africa – it happens everywhere.
The Republicans’ vicious attacks on Donald Trump’s whistle-blowing former lawyer Michael Cohen during last week’s congressional hearings is a case in point.
But rarely is it as obligatory and foolishly done as on the benches of the majority party in our Parliament.
ANC parliamentarians are so lousy and transparent at pulling off this toeing the line thing that they do not bother to inform themselves about the subject at hand.
This was obvious last week when the portfolio committee on police met to discuss Police Minister Bheki Cele’s decision not to renew the head of the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid) Robert McBride’s contract.
The committee’s ANC members just bulldozed their way through the debate without making any cogent arguments.
Now, McBride may be totally in the wrong in this saga, but a case still needs to be made as to why he had to be put out to pasture.
The reasoning advanced by the members was woeful – it was as if they were still suffering from the weekend’s excesses.
News reports quoted ANC MP Jerome Maake saying that Parliament should not bother doing its oversight duty because, “when the elephants are fighting, it is the grass that suffers”.
“I don’t see a situation where you put two people who are fighting in the same room and you switch off the light and you leave them there,” said Comrade Maake sagely.
His colleague, Comrade Livhuhani Mabija, said McBride should be disciplined for making Parliament incur unnecessary costs by debating the issue of his contract.
“The leader of Ipid will need to be disciplined by the party that he belongs to, whether it is the ANC or the DA or whatever. He must be disciplined for what he has caused us to do. We are drinking juices and so on, wasting time,” said Mabija.
Comrade Leonard Ramatlakane, who once left for the Congress of the People and then begged his way back to the ANC benches, and has since been a superloyal and disciplined cadre, led the charge that McBride had no automatic right to have his contract renewed.
Comrade Martha Mmola was even more blunt – she just asked what McBride was fighting for.
She said that he was interfering with work in their constituencies, which basically means she would have preferred a longer weekend at home in Tweebuffelsmeteenskootmorsdoodgeskietfontein (this lowly newspaperman is convinced this is where she comes from).
Mmola called for the post to “be advised today; we are not going to fight over reasons”.
While this drama was playing out in that committee, ANC members on the portfolio committee on communications were trying to frustrate the filling of vacant SABC board seats.
With the inexplicable assistance of the EFF, the ANC wanted the broadcaster to go into the elections with an inquorate and hobbled board.
The motives for this would have been obvious even to a drunkard in a mampoer bar.
Anyway, like sheep, the good comrades did as they were told and postponed the short-listing of candidates.
After a public outcry and pressure that was embarrassing those at the very top, they were told to reverse their decision. They duly complied. It was a cringeworthy climbdown.
It is our humble hope that the parliamentarians the majority party sends to the national legislature are worthy of the term “public representatives” and behave accordingly.
