Mhlekazi, kutheni nivumela amakhwenkwe namantombazana aphazamise iingxoxo zasePalamente nje phaya eKapa? (Your royal highness, why do you allow boys and girls to disrupt parliamentary discussions down there in Cape Town?)
This is the question I am confronted with whenever I am in the company of villagers and people who value African traditions and norms. These are people who know me as a traditional leader and a politician.
These are people who are fully aware of the need for leaders who are mandated to give leadership and guidance on the challenges facing the nation. They are also fully aware of the right of freedom of speech and the need to engage in vibrant, robust and fearless debate while giving leadership.
The villagers participate in traditional assembly (iimbizo) discussions where community matters are addressed. They know there are rules and protocols that ensure the presiding officer (usually inkosi himself or someone appointed by him) is respected even when you may disagree with his rulings; that each participant is accorded an opportunity to have his say even if he says the most ludicrous things in your view; and that only one person is given the floor to speak while others wait their turn.
They are also fully aware that the listeners are free to mumble and grumble and murmur their feelings about the speaker’s utterances without unduly disrupting him.
Our open and transparent system of parliamentary democracy in terms of which debates and proceedings are broadcast live on television to the citizenry, coupled with the availability of electricity even in the most deprived village household, makes it possible for our people to follow what their elected representatives get up to when they carry out their respective mandates.
They have even previously been able to catch some dozing off. But now they see others behaving like uncultured boys and girls. They shake their heads, bewildered by what democracy has brought about.
These citizens are well aware of the conduct expected of younger people towards older people. They know who can participate in certain forums of debate and discussion and who cannot. In general, the young are not supposed to take part in adult conversations and discussions, especially in community affairs.
The young occupy themselves with recreational activities and getting an education and performing the more menial tasks such as herding livestock, cleaning the household, and fetching water and firewood to prepare meals.
Their lack of maturity and experience in life has not equipped them with insight. Nor do they have patience to wait for accepted processes to unfold. The young want results, now!
Like the modern-day child who will advise his parent without money to go to the ATM and get money when they want something bought for them, the young who are plunged into the realm of state affairs want transformation to occur today, not on any other day.
My village interlocutors see, on television, the Speaker of the National Assembly or her deputy, sometimes the other house chairpersons, trying to advise one of the young red-clad MPs how s/he is supposed to convey their views in the chamber in terms of the rules. They see her referring to the MP as “Honourable Member” even when there is absolutely nothing honourable in that member’s conduct. And while she is still remonstrating with the dishonourable member who refuses to defer to her authority as Speaker, another red-clad MP rises, without being called to speak, citing a point of order. This individual then has the temerity to seek to teach the Speaker how to respond to the first MP’s intervention.
The Speaker must then turn to the second member to remind them that they are not supposed to speak without being recognised.
And as this is happening a third, fourth and even fifth member of the red overall brigade stands up to give the Speaker yet more unsolicited and ill-mannered advice.
These red overalls are also joined by other “Honourable Members” sitting on the left-hand side of the Speaker, ostensibly to help the Speaker handle the unruly behaviour of their colleagues.
As the interaction proceeds it becomes clear the purpose of the latest intervention is to gain political mileage to counter the headlines that the red overalls are making in the evening or early-morning news.
Not to be outdone, and for more or less the same reason, some of those sitting on the ruling party benches also stand up to assist the Speaker. Some of their interventions are helpful, yet others tend to make matters worse. As a result the institution is a circus.
I am then asked in the villages, if the country’s constitution does consider rules of African culture when parliament makes its codes of conduct. They ask this because individuals who have undergone rites of passage into adulthood (ulwaluko by boys and ukuthomba by girls) are expected to behave, talk and relate to elders and their peers in a particular way. The young do not talk back to their elders. They do not call elders by their first name. They prefix their names or clan names by appellations such as tata, mama, sisi, bhuti, (father, mother, sister, brother) even if they are strangers.
My interlocutors are fully convinced that the behaviour being displayed in parliament is a curse to the leadership who, when given the opportunity to right the wrongs of the past, decided to launch an order that does not recognise the indigenous values and mores of the majority of the citizens.
Questioned in this manner, I am obliged to give my understanding of what is happening in what we call the fifth parliament. I have been there since 1994, at the dawn of democracy. I know that as a member of the ANC, I have expressed my reservations on every relevant platform about the unseemly haste to adopt policies and laws which promote values that no African state has ever accepted. We talk of equality as if there are no limitations to the exercising of human rights. We talk of freedom of speech and expression as if there should be no limits on how a person expresses himself/herself.
The result is the mayhem and lawlessness we see in parliament; the lack of respect for authority and elders in the national discourse.
I go on to explain that we set out to deliberately create a new order, one without precedent anywhere in the world. We had been oppressed by racist imperialists who had no desire to go back to where their forebears had originated, for an unprecedented period of 342 years.
We had been removed from our land, denied the right to our spirituality and indoctrinated with a foreign one, miseducated and uncivilised by being denied the right to our culture. Thus we overcompensated in our desire to correct the wrongs of the past.
Wherever we travel as we seek to promote our land in various parts of the globe we are feted for having performed a miracle by overpowering the most entrenched form of racism in the world. Our constitution is hailed as the best, yet no one wants to emulate it.
The mother of the modern parliaments, the British parliament, is made up of two chambers – the elected House of Commons and the hereditary House of Lords (essentially the House of Traditional Leaders) – purposely to ensure that democracy must be tempered with respect for the traditions, customs and cultural values that make the British British.
We, on the other hand, see no real value in making our own Houses of Lords an integral part of our legislatures. The result is that African culture plays second fiddle to the mores and values bequeathed by our erstwhile oppressors.
Of course, I continue to explain to my villagers that MPs the world over are referred to as “Honourable” for the simple reason that they are expected to conduct themselves honourably, respectful of others and with common decency (what we call decorum).
These MPs are arguably, next to the members of the judiciary, the most powerful people in the land. They make laws that govern the lives of the people, after all. They have the power to make rules to regulate their own conduct. So, they are in a position to change the rules in accordance with their own rules.
It is not expected of an elected MP to disobey the rules of parliament. This being a country subject to the rule of law, anyone who breaks the law must be arrested and subjected to the judicial processes, which means the police must arrest lawbreakers, prosecutors must prosecute them, judges must try their cases and, if found guilty, lawbreakers must be punished by being sentenced to jail or a fine being imposed.
The best way forward for the red-clad “Honourable Members” is to abide by the rules. If they do not like them they should seek to change them according to the existing rules. If they cannot, they must behave honourably or resign and pursue their revolution outside of parliament.
My fellow villagers though, are not impressed. They believe people who behave like children should, if they want to be taken seriously as leaders, undergo ulwaluko or intonjane or the equivalent of those.
Nkosi Phathekile Holomisa is Deputy Minister of Labour
Why are girls and boys allowed to run riots?
This is the question I am confronted with whenever I am in the company of villagers and people who value African traditions and norms. These are people who know me as a traditional leader and a politician.
These are people who are fully aware of the need for leaders who are mandated to give leadership and guidance on the challenges facing the nation. They are also fully aware of the right of freedom of speech and the need to engage in vibrant, robust and fearless debate while giving leadership.
The villagers participate in traditional assembly (iimbizo) discussions where community matters are addressed. They know there are rules and protocols that ensure the presiding officer (usually inkosi himself or someone appointed by him) is respected even when you may disagree with his rulings; that each participant is accorded an opportunity to have his say even if he says the most ludicrous things in your view; and that only one person is given the floor to speak while others wait their turn.
They are also fully aware that the listeners are free to mumble and grumble and murmur their feelings about the speaker’s utterances without unduly disrupting him.
Our open and transparent system of parliamentary democracy in terms of which debates and proceedings are broadcast live on television to the citizenry, coupled with the availability of electricity even in the most deprived village household, makes it possible for our people to follow what their elected representatives get up to when they carry out their respective mandates.
They have even previously been able to catch some dozing off. But now they see others behaving like uncultured boys and girls. They shake their heads, bewildered by what democracy has brought about.
These citizens are well aware of the conduct expected of younger people towards older people. They know who can participate in certain forums of debate and discussion and who cannot. In general, the young are not supposed to take part in adult conversations and discussions, especially in community affairs.
The young occupy themselves with recreational activities and getting an education and performing the more menial tasks such as herding livestock, cleaning the household, and fetching water and firewood to prepare meals.
Their lack of maturity and experience in life has not equipped them with insight. Nor do they have patience to wait for accepted processes to unfold. The young want results, now!
Like the modern-day child who will advise his parent without money to go to the ATM and get money when they want something bought for them, the young who are plunged into the realm of state affairs want transformation to occur today, not on any other day.
My village interlocutors see, on television, the Speaker of the National Assembly or her deputy, sometimes the other house chairpersons, trying to advise one of the young red-clad MPs how s/he is supposed to convey their views in the chamber in terms of the rules. They see her referring to the MP as “Honourable Member” even when there is absolutely nothing honourable in that member’s conduct. And while she is still remonstrating with the dishonourable member who refuses to defer to her authority as Speaker, another red-clad MP rises, without being called to speak, citing a point of order. This individual then has the temerity to seek to teach the Speaker how to respond to the first MP’s intervention.
The Speaker must then turn to the second member to remind them that they are not supposed to speak without being recognised.
And as this is happening a third, fourth and even fifth member of the red overall brigade stands up to give the Speaker yet more unsolicited and ill-mannered advice.
These red overalls are also joined by other “Honourable Members” sitting on the left-hand side of the Speaker, ostensibly to help the Speaker handle the unruly behaviour of their colleagues.
As the interaction proceeds it becomes clear the purpose of the latest intervention is to gain political mileage to counter the headlines that the red overalls are making in the evening or early-morning news.
Not to be outdone, and for more or less the same reason, some of those sitting on the ruling party benches also stand up to assist the Speaker. Some of their interventions are helpful, yet others tend to make matters worse. As a result the institution is a circus.
I am then asked in the villages, if the country’s constitution does consider rules of African culture when parliament makes its codes of conduct. They ask this because individuals who have undergone rites of passage into adulthood (ulwaluko by boys and ukuthomba by girls) are expected to behave, talk and relate to elders and their peers in a particular way. The young do not talk back to their elders. They do not call elders by their first name. They prefix their names or clan names by appellations such as tata, mama, sisi, bhuti, (father, mother, sister, brother) even if they are strangers.
My interlocutors are fully convinced that the behaviour being displayed in parliament is a curse to the leadership who, when given the opportunity to right the wrongs of the past, decided to launch an order that does not recognise the indigenous values and mores of the majority of the citizens.
Questioned in this manner, I am obliged to give my understanding of what is happening in what we call the fifth parliament. I have been there since 1994, at the dawn of democracy. I know that as a member of the ANC, I have expressed my reservations on every relevant platform about the unseemly haste to adopt policies and laws which promote values that no African state has ever accepted. We talk of equality as if there are no limitations to the exercising of human rights. We talk of freedom of speech and expression as if there should be no limits on how a person expresses himself/herself.
The result is the mayhem and lawlessness we see in parliament; the lack of respect for authority and elders in the national discourse.
I go on to explain that we set out to deliberately create a new order, one without precedent anywhere in the world. We had been oppressed by racist imperialists who had no desire to go back to where their forebears had originated, for an unprecedented period of 342 years.
We had been removed from our land, denied the right to our spirituality and indoctrinated with a foreign one, miseducated and uncivilised by being denied the right to our culture. Thus we overcompensated in our desire to correct the wrongs of the past.
Wherever we travel as we seek to promote our land in various parts of the globe we are feted for having performed a miracle by overpowering the most entrenched form of racism in the world. Our constitution is hailed as the best, yet no one wants to emulate it.
The mother of the modern parliaments, the British parliament, is made up of two chambers – the elected House of Commons and the hereditary House of Lords (essentially the House of Traditional Leaders) – purposely to ensure that democracy must be tempered with respect for the traditions, customs and cultural values that make the British British.
We, on the other hand, see no real value in making our own Houses of Lords an integral part of our legislatures. The result is that African culture plays second fiddle to the mores and values bequeathed by our erstwhile oppressors.
Of course, I continue to explain to my villagers that MPs the world over are referred to as “Honourable” for the simple reason that they are expected to conduct themselves honourably, respectful of others and with common decency (what we call decorum).
These MPs are arguably, next to the members of the judiciary, the most powerful people in the land. They make laws that govern the lives of the people, after all. They have the power to make rules to regulate their own conduct. So, they are in a position to change the rules in accordance with their own rules.
It is not expected of an elected MP to disobey the rules of parliament. This being a country subject to the rule of law, anyone who breaks the law must be arrested and subjected to the judicial processes, which means the police must arrest lawbreakers, prosecutors must prosecute them, judges must try their cases and, if found guilty, lawbreakers must be punished by being sentenced to jail or a fine being imposed.
The best way forward for the red-clad “Honourable Members” is to abide by the rules. If they do not like them they should seek to change them according to the existing rules. If they cannot, they must behave honourably or resign and pursue their revolution outside of parliament.
My fellow villagers though, are not impressed. They believe people who behave like children should, if they want to be taken seriously as leaders, undergo ulwaluko or intonjane or the equivalent of those.
Nkosi Phathekile Holomisa is Deputy Minister of Labour
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