Parliament is where the grand inquest of the nation takes place. It is meant to be a deliberative assembly where issues are debated in the public glare. Its business is to make laws proactively and sometimes retroactively but also to take the issues of the moment simultaneously with everything else and certainly not to leave these for radio talk shows and the media as is happening at present. When a Parliament stifles free debate and prevents hard questions being put to ministers, it serves the interest of the governing party, not of the people of the country awaiting delivery. The questions of the people should and must be addressed frequently and openly in parliament - not in the streets and the media.

The South African Parliament is a sausage machine that churns out legislation. It is not the GRAND INQUISITION OF THE NATION.

 If any institution exists in the name of the people, for the welfare of the people, by right of the people, then that institution is Parliament. Nelson Mandela stated, during his treason trial, that the ‘will of the people is the basis of the authority of government’. Today it is the will of government that is once again the authority; and it is the interest of governing party rather than that of the people that prevails in Parliament. If we in this nation strengthen every institution of democracy but leave Parliament, the very mother of democracy, free to be dragged which ever way the government wants to go, there will be no democracy and no unity, only autocracy and hostility.

The time has come to reform our electoral system, and most importantly, the time has come to reform our Parliament so that it becomes the grand inquisition of the people as it ought to be.

 Unfortunately, the South African Parliament is a most malleable instrument. Its members are made to sing as though in a chorus or orchestra under the watchful eye of the conductor. Parliamentarians are not free souls and by that account neither is South Africa. The electoral system has to be changed so that accountability is to the people.  Right now, as I am writing this, the majority party is worrying about who is going to be jumping ship. If MPs were treated as they deserve to be with the right to do what their consciences dictated, would any satisfied and fulfilled MP contemplate such action? It says volumes for what is going on. The atmosphere in there has to be very toxic for a bunch of people to want to go into an uncertain future.

I want to ask in the strongest possible manner that this message about reforming Parliament should get into every network so that collectively we can work to reform Parliament before it is too late. Another opportunity like the present one may never come again. That very day when Parliament starts working in the interest of the people, the quality of health, housing, welfare, education and security will improve dramatically and simultaneously. While Parliament only churns out laws and fails to be the grand inquest of the nation, debates will take place elsewhere and government will never be properly accountabile.

Parliament cannot be a lapdog. It has to be a watchdog. We, the people have failed Parliament and so Parliament in turn is failing us.

The age of simple ideology is past. The world is much too integrated and much too complex for that. South African society, likewise, is much too diverse and much too unequal for any single ideology to suffice. A new party needs to form that will embrace eco-ethical, intergenerational, gender equal, transformative, techno-social democracy. This is a mouthful but then the beast we are talking about is not bite size.

 The world is fast approaching the moment of critical mass in respect of climate change. Therefore ecology and sustainability have to override and not be overridden by all other considerations. The window of opportunity is small and closing.

The next issue is that of ethics and values. A non-racial, non-sexist and prosperous South Africa requires ethics and values to obtain throughout the system without any exception or relaxation. Only if pre-eminence is given to ethics and values, will South Africa experience a turn around and be safe and prosperous.

 The creation of structures that accommodate intergenerational participation and involvement is of critical importance. Just as gender parity must prevail, so too must intergenerational accommodation occur in a visible manner.

 The need for transformation must not only address material issues but alienation and attitudes as well. This is one country, with one people, with one destiny. Core values and not skin colour should unite and bind the people together.

 The society that must emerge should have thorough education; and technology should be harnessed extensively so that people in the service of the nation work smarter not harder, where people not records take up the time, and where information technology reaches into each town and each rural village.

The South African Democratic Congress is the people’s congress and we can either choose to have five more years of what we had for fifteen years or work for change from this instance forward. For every South African, the platform is now in place to build a non-racial, non-sexist, and prosperous South Africa. Everyone has equal power, equal say and an equal opportunity.

 The Freedom Charter’s first substantive clause boldly declares that “The People Shall Govern!” The instrumentalities are: equality and the franchise for all regardless of race, colour or sex; the right to stand as public representatives for legislative bodies; the right to “take part in the administration of the country”; and the right to create democratic organs of self-government”. In conformity with those ideals South Africa created a representative democracy with human rights enshrined in a constitution supporting popular, collective self-empowerment.

It is in respect of popular, collective self-empowerment where our democracy has lagged behind. This is because bureaucracy sees it function as controlling, checking, and approving rather than facilitating, supporting or empowering. Who hasn’t had that experience of being pushed and shoved and delayed by bureaucrats and officials. Who has felt like having governed or experienced the state as serving the people’s interest? How many people encountered a bureaucracy that facilitated matters for them and did not simply send them from pillar to post. All those who had a very favourable encounter will bureaucracy will see no need for change. Everyone else will want to see substantial change.

The South African Democratic Congress says that the people shall govern. That means you. The proviso though is that people should seize the opportunity and never relinquish it again.

Whoever goes to branch meetings called by political parties? Yet all policy initiatives begin at the branch level. Branches have to exist for a political structure to obtain. Branches unfortunately are difficult to sustain because we in South Africa do not have demarcated constituencies. But then again we live in the information age and we can have meetings and conferences via the internet. We can be members of a cyber branche and participate in approving policies of our respective parties and thereby contribute to improving service delivery.

I have formed such a cyber branch and I invite all those who have email addresses and wish to be in my branch of COP (Congress of the People) to email me at: shen@iafrica.com

This way I can keep you posted on what is happening within COP and at the same time I can interact with you and take a poll to see how you feel about the things being initiated within COP. For example, every cyber branch, if these had been in existence, could have ascertained from its membership how people felt about the dismantling of the Scorpions by the ANC government. We as members could have enriched the debate among ourselves and then the prevailing view or the dominat view could have been added to the public discourse. We could have acted with strength.

The beauty of a cyber political party is that it is operational 17 hours for 7 days every week. The secretary does not have to post any notices of meeting to members and neither does anyone have to wait for weeks or months to raise an issue. It is done on the turn. If comments or views are needed from members, these can be ascertained in the space of a few hours. Action follows fast on the heels of the request. Comments of satisfaction or dissatisfaction in respect of how the issue was handled by the branch can appear on the site for all to see and to comment on. Isn’t this fabulous? Isn’t this real democracy at work?

Normal political meetings take hours if not days to conclude and all sorts of agendas are at play making it difficult to act decisively on anything. Such meetings tax the patience to the very limit. Using the written form to communicate via the internet concentrates the mind and allows for trends and themes to be picked up quickly for a policy stance to be taken. When it comes to a request from members, a form can be filled in on the screen and by pressing the submit button it will have arrived at the Branch Headquarters in the blink of an eye lid to be procesessed. Members can also initiate blogs or comment on a blog. Decisions arrived at by the branch can be communicated by SMS.

Serious and complex matters can thus be discussed in a disciplined, efficient and professional manner. Everyone but everyone gets a chance to participate. Best of all, no one can close down the space for debate and discussion. Even better still, everyone is immediately on record. There’s no need for minutes, correction of minutes and confirmation of minutes. Cyber meetings get down to business and those who participate lose nothing by momentarily going down to water the garden or have afternoon tea before returning to the site to see how things have progressed. Members can scroll up and down and take note of how the discussion has been going.

Cyber meetings also give members the opportunity to revise their viewpoints, after reflecting on what others have had to say, so that their final views are correctly recorded. When a member of parliament is involved as the leader of a branch, members can raise questions to be put to parliament and demand action. South Africa’s parliamentarians have no real idea which issues to address because constituency offices either do not exist - or if they do - they seldom or never fulfil their intended purpose. If I have got this wrong I shall happily take correction.

In a cyber branch members can search the archive, read news, get a picture of what is going on, and network among themselves. They can contribute to the welfare of the branch, collectively support a good cause and raise public awareness in their respective localities. It doesn’t matter that two members in a party from the same household may belong to two different branches. That is how democracy should operate. Members can also freely and without any fear or anxiety raise any issue even if that issue concerns trangsgressions in respect of probity, honesty, or integrity on the part of an official. There’s no place to hide. There’s no way of muzzling the dissenting voices.  

Obviously each branch will have to have a cut off point as to how many members it can accommodate. One party official can only accommodate so many people and no more. This number may be 10 000 or 20 000 but it certainly cannot be 1 000 000. Neither the system nor the individual heading the branch will be able to cope with that volume. Anyway it would be sheer optimism to believe that more than a few hundred people would participate at any one time.  

Already I hear you say that this will exclude many people in our country because they do not have electricity, computers and internet connection. Bull dust, I say! Every person who is a member of the branch with access to facilities can accommodate a fellower parishoner, a worker, a customer, a plumber or a farmer who needs political assistance. Make no mistake. People are inventive and they will know where to go for help if it is being advertised and offered. We live in a country where Ubuntu is the prevailing philosophy. Members who wish to connect with others in their community can give out that they can help to raise issues for them and thereby help to accelerate service delivery to them. Social capital is something that we can all do with.

A cyber branch allows for anyone who is a South African citizen, within or outside the country, to participate in a branch. Members who are outside the country can contribute new perspectives and ideas on given topics. What a boon this can be! Each cyber branch, on account of the Proportional Representation System, will obviously be built around a particular political personality. Those for instance who wish to participate in my branch will choose to do so because they fancy working with me and like my style. Once their membership is approved their names will be included on a register. Anyone who tends to be vulgar, abusive, racist or obstructionist can have his \ her membership revoked by taking a poll among the members. The members name will then be taken out of the register and further participation will be disallowed for whatever period is agreed on.

A cyber branch can have many officials, each fulfilling a strategic purpose. If a branch is large and vibrant, it will need to have its own server and offer a variety of media to cater for the different needs. Intergenerational interests can be addressed by suitable engagement with each group through whatever is the appropriate media for that group. The fact that a data base of answers and responses will exist will allow for answers to similar questions to be consistent. The Congress of the People is already acutely alive to the need to bring young people into political discussion and participation.

At a time in our country when crime is rampant, politics is drifting, the economy is in a cruch, climate change is threatening, food security concerns are mounting, job losses are occurring, education is in the doldrums and young lives are being destroyed through drug addiction, it is more urgent than ever to bring political interaction into the twenty first century. This is the tool of the time.

So, if you like the idea of joining my cyber branch of the Congress of the People why don’t you email me at: shen@iafrica.com. so that we can get started right away. If not, thanks anyway for giving me the opportunity of sharing my thoughts with you. I promise that whatever I promise I will deliver and how will I be able to duck out of it with all of you sitting as the jury in front of your screens?  

The November national convention will be taking place against a backdrop of slowing world economic growth and terrible financial turmoil. The consequences for the country are many and serious. The emergence of a new political party will therefore be very timely because pressing issues need a dynamic response.

The new party should have multiple levels of leadership to cater for gender, race and interest differences; and most importantly it must visibly and consciously span the different generations. The leadership should be broad but integrated so that the party can simultaneously work with multiple time horizons, negotiate dynamically on core issues, and manage the administration of the organisational structure efficiently and democratically. The focus should shift from personality and the cult of personality to interaction, policies, outcomes, deliberation, dialogue and administration.

The national convention is an opportunity to eschew the “mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of us all” question. Focus should fall squarely on substantive issues. Lekota and Shilowa have presented South Africa with a rare gift horse that should not be looked in the mouth. The convention should certainly not be about Lekota or about Zuma. It should not be about the ANC. It should be about South Africa and the decade to come.

The vast reservoir of political goodwill accruing from 1994 is now nearly exhausted. The fat years are also at an end. Hardship, poverty, and hunger for the majority loom. South Africa, a net exporter of food, has now become a net importer. To add to the growing gloom, the markets are in terrible turmoil and will in all likelihood remain that way for a while. As though this was not enough, climate change is accelerating in a threatening manner. The new party should advance innovative and sustainable policies on the economy, governance, social security, jobs, housing, education, health, safety and the environment.

The convention is an opportunity for South Africans to interrogate the electoral system and to exert pressure for its reform. Trust in politicians is wearing thin because the system depends extensively, if not entirely, on patronage.

While it has succeeded in ensuring representivity, it has failed dismally in allowing for accountability to the electorate. As everyone in this country clearly witnessed, the president, the premiers and the mayors are all made to answer exclusively to the party, not to the country. The party can do with each of them what it wishes while the people are rendered mere helpless onlookers.

It is the same with every MP and every councillor. A very small number of people in South Africa have the authority to influence sudden and dramatic changes in the political sphere and this is not reflective of representative democracy. Parties just have too much power while individual MPs are rendered ineffectual because of the party list system.

Only a mixed system of direct and proportional representation will ensure that both representivity as well as accountability are kept in balance. No one should settle for anything less than this. Complacency in this regard will be nothing short of complicity.

South Africans also witnessed how the majority party went about dismantling the Scorpions. No MP in the majority party dissented. No one could. This does not bode well for the future because party interest will always trump every other interest.

Much earlier the majority party abolished interpellations in Parliament because these tended to be rough on the executive. No less a person than ANC luminary Matthews Phosa roundly condemned Parliament’s failure to hold ministers properly accountable. The new party should undertake to strengthen Parliament so that it no longer operates in the shadow of the executive and even at the behest of the executive.

Lekota has already identified the muzzling of party members as an unacceptable practice and therefore any new party that forms must establish freedom of expression and freedom of conscience as the right that each party member will enjoy without any fetters or threat of punitive action. At the moment political parties will happily harbour members implicated in corruption but aggressively turf out those who stand up for a principle. A new party that forms must get its priorities right: the corrupt should be kicked out and those who have the courage of their conviction should be embraced.

A new progressive movement must ensure that the government genuinely exists for and on behalf of the people. Zimbabwe offers a glaring example, right on our door step, of how blind loyalty to a political party, illustrious as it may have been, can utterly and totally ruin a country inside of ten years.

Today Zimbabweans still have their Zanu-PF intact, but no country worth speaking of.

A malleable instrument
Our democratic institutions are certainly in greater danger from a majority party that obsesses about its members and has too much leeway. Under the present circumstances, whatever a ruling party decrees, the MPs will have to oblige. Parliament is a most malleable instrument. This is because it is by favour of a political party that an individual comes to Parliament and therefore that individual has to be obligated to the party.

The party demands and enforces conformity and is answered without even a demur. The wishes of the few, who have power, get carried every time. Thus it is that the leader of the ANCYL can say with certainty and full assurance, before a scheduled meeting, that president Mbeki will be recalled and, hey presto, the president is recalled. As simple as that!

Power corrupts and absolute power, as Lord Acton observed, corrupts absolutely. The humiliation of Nelson Mandela in 2002 by certain members of the ANC, as reported in the newspapers recently, indicates how thoroughly rotten the situation can become when morality gives way to ugly expediency.

Not even a man of the iconic stature of Mandela could speak to power inside his own party without being crushed. Professor Kader Asmal, in an interview with Mandy Rossouw of the Mail & Guardian on February 22 2008, emphasised the need for members of the party “to speak out”, but how can they under the present dispensation? No one, but no one, speaks out. Every MP in South Africa operates under the radar. This is utterly dangerous and every democrat in the country must work to alter the situation.

Any new party that emerges must exert itself to reform the electoral system. The direct election of mayors, premiers and the president will make them accountable to the people and not to a party. All public representatives should also be made more directly accountable to the electorate.

Poverty and unemployment are seriously impeded by corruption in the public and private sector. In Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perceptions Index, South Africa slipped from 46th position to 51st. The national convention must express itself on this cancer that is destroying the social fabric.

Anyone implicated in corruption must be blacklisted and never allowed into public life, or employed in government service, or given government contract. The corrupt should be declared the permanent pariahs of society. When the new party forms, every member who wishes to hold office or stand as a representative should be thoroughly screened so that the corrupt can be kept at bay. Political morality has to be given serious commitment in deeds.

In order for people to believe in politicians, transparency of the highest order should prevail. While the legislation on the prevention of corruption is commendable, it is important to include provisions therein that will cover the funding of political parties.

The national convention should not shy away from requiring the new party to uphold transparency as the first principle of the organisation. It is so much better to play open cards with the electorate and lose a few votes than to conceal the truth from them and take their votes deceitfully. In this regard members should be free to speak to the media instead of having to leak sensitive information surreptitiously to the media. Debate and transparency are essential to growth.

The convention should also require the new party to give extensive encouragement to intellectual discourse and the continuous and systematic critique of policies, ideologies, leadership and organisation. Specific provisions should exist in the Constitution to make this possible and to create a senior position within the party for this purpose to be adequately discharged and reported on annually. This is where the new party can take a quantum leap and help South Africa to keep abreast of best international practices.

The formation of a new party should also make clear provision for the separation of party and state. State resources should never be employed for party purposes nor should state employees be suborned to serve narrow party interests. Party members who serve the state should uphold the Constitution and never compromise it on account of party affiliations. The national convention should take a strong stance on this so that the party keeps its credibility with the nation.

MF Cassim is a retired member of Parliament

He said on Wednesday he intended to “get involved” in debate on Terror Lekota‘s proposed national convention, to be held in Bloemfontein on November 2.

“I have quit the ANC. I haven’t joined anything else,” he said.

“There is a national debate about the national convention which obviously as an activist I will get involved in that national debate.

“I’m going to be participating in this debate. Whatever comes out of the convention is another matter.”

He said in a statement that the decision had been hard and painful, as he had been a member of the ANC all his political life.

He also said ANC membership in the faction-ridden Western Cape had become a burden to the leadership of the ANC.

“Hence, there is a wish by the leadership that the ANC should lose this province and that such a loss would be a welcome relief.”

Ramatlakane quit his MEC’s position in July this year, following the sacking of premier Ebrahim Rasool.

At the time, he said he was weary of constant attacks on him and his department.

His resignation from the party follows the public resignation last week of a number of other prominent ANC members in the province, including the leader of the party caucus in the Cape Town city council, Mbulelo Ncedana.

- SAPA

Invitations to attend have been sent to churches and community groups in Orange Farm, Sebokeng, Evaton, Finetown and surrounding areas.

“But anyone who wishes to come to the multi-purpose centre in Orange Farm Extension six will be welcome,” said convention spokesperson Mbulelo Ncedana.

The meeting, scheduled to start at 11:30, is one of several planned over coming days, to discuss arrangements for and the orientation of, the convention, which is planned for next weekend, October 31 – November 2.

- SAPA

Shilowa, who recently quit as Gauteng premier, said a preparatory committee for the convention was elected at a meeting in Johannesburg on Sunday.

The body included former ANC chairperson Terror Lekota, Shilowa, former ANC national executive member Charlotte Lobe, former Cosatu president Willie Madisha and Anele Nda, a member of the Youth Commission in the Eastern Cape.

Former ANC Dullah Omar regional secretary in the Western Cape Mbulelo Ncedana was appointed national spokesman.

A website, www.sanationalconvention.com, was also launched.

Shilowa said eight of the country’s nine provinces sent representatives to the meeting with KwaZulu-Natal being the exception.

The meeting dealt with the logistics involved in the convention and decided it would be held between October 31 and November 2.

The objective was to seek “consensus on a set of values, defend democratic space and concentrate on how to speed up the realisation of second generation rights in our constitution”, Shilowa said.

Lekota has said the convention would be held in Bloemfontein on November 2.

A venue is yet to be announced.

- SAPA