The violent eviction by plainclothes police of the entire EFF caucus during President Jacob Zuma’s recent state of the nation address (Sona) has caused many to wonder if the country is at a tipping point.
Tipping points are usually recognised with the benefit of hindsight so it will be hard to say in this instance. However, there is a very palpable sense that something about the spirit in which parliament has always conducted its business in the democratic era has irrevocably changed.
Many citizens are grappling with what the entire macabre business of the last week means for the future of the country and its democracy.
It was not just the police action that alarmed many, but the scrambling of the mobile phone signal by the country’s lawless spooks; and Zuma finding reason to laugh, whatever the trigger, while the ugly drama was playing out before the eyes of the world.
At the heart of the breakdown of parliamentary order is his refusal to offer even half-decent answers to very searching questions from MPs. This, notwithstanding the futility of only looking to Zuma to explain all of this.
The question is how the country has come to have a president and executive that often pays lip service to parliament.
We have to try and understand why it is not just ANC MPs but the entire ANC leadership collective that appears prepared to assume a public character mirroring the contours of Zuma’s compromised ethical universe.
In order to work, democracies need a reasonable balance of power and tension between different forces in society, and between the three arms of state.
Too much power or weakness on any side tilts the scales in a direction that can only compromise the promise of democracy itself. In cases where either strength or weakness, or both, exist in excess, the democratic architecture, even if retained, can be relegated to tokenism while the country slips into de facto dictatorship.
South Africa’s Constitution was founded on this principle. That is why it subjects all administrative and legislative actions to a test of its own even where private persons and organisations are concerned.
It also places limitations on what majorities can do in order prevent a dictatorship of the majority over the minority.
But the same Constitution is unable to provide sufficient remedies for nefarious intentions by a collective who wish to abuse constitutional process for their own ends.
The violence we witnessed in parliament is an apt demonstration of what happens when there is an imbalance of powers in society and the state, and the assumptions built into the constitution turn out to be untrue, at least under certain circumstances.
A central assumption in our constitutional dispensation is the omnipresence of “good faith” among those empowered to take decisions, like the president, speaker, ministers and certain high-ranking officials of the executive branch.
This assumption is the basis on which the president is empowered to appoint heads of institutions whose primary task is to give meaning to the ideal of justice and equality before the law, even when very powerful figures are implicated.
These include the chief justice, national director of public prosecutions, national police commissioner, public protector and others.
In order for these institutions to be effective, the president must have a genuine desire to establish a culture of accountability where the appointed office-bearers can potentially become a pain in his neck too – without recriminations. This means appointing people who not only have credentials, but are accepted.
The constitution was never designed to also accommodate the individual proclivities of presidents and the organisational cultures of those political parties that would come into power from time to time.
As it happens now the country faces a lethal test on three fronts.
The first is a governing party with an overwhelming majority that allows it to rubber-stamp executive decisions without the interrogation and oversight envisaged by the constitution.
Even in the years preceding Zuma’s tenure as president, ANC MPs had generally developed a sycophantic bent.
This is a reflection of a weak, unresponsive electoral system that empowers party bosses over voters.
As a result they have used their parliamentary majority to stymie executive accountability rather than enhance it.
That the president has not been called to testify before a select committee to comprehensively provide answers to the MPs that elected him because ANC MPs blocked such a move demonstrates the deeper paralysis of the institution.
It fails to live up to its promise of holding the executive to account, losing its own credibility in the process.
The second area of attack is from a president who, endowed with enormous executive powers, not only faces the real prospect of a criminal trial but has a laissez faire attitude to legal procedure, protocol and ethics.
His propensity to enthusiastically allow private interests to interfere with the functioning of state organs and officials was aptly demonstrated in the absurd situation where a foreign wedding party used the country’s premier air force base, Waterkloof, to receive guests who did not even go through the proper immigration procedures.
It was the need not to put his personal friends, and perhaps himself, in trouble that led to a clumsy whitewash, the outcome of which continues to outrage South Africans across the spectrum.
Such a president will, as this one does, have a need for spineless or incompetent heads of institutions who will do as they are told when the president or his acolytes get into trouble.
The final attack is from a governing party that believes all state institutions should necessarily demonstrate deference to that party, even when in conflict with the constitutional architecture of the country.
The outcome of this inevitable divergence in outlook is a series of attacks by the ANC on various officials such as the public protector and judges whenever they have made adverse findings against the president.
It is because of one such finding, in this case the expenditure of R246-million largely on Zuma’s comfort at his private home, that the non-responsiveness of parliament has seen frustration spilling over into its hallowed chambers.
It is when institutions that are supposed to adjudicate over disputes or extract accountability from powerful interests no longer respond to that imperative that anarchy begins to take root. There are two reasons for this.
The first is that the active erosion of these institutions to ensure they are paralysed, gives free reign to rogue leaders and elements to run amok.
The second arises from the sense of outrage and helplessness among those affected who decide to paralyse the same sham institutions, such as parliament is, so that they are no longer able to give false legitimacy to fraud.
Despite the apparent calm that has returned to parliament this past week, the deadlock created by Zuma’s reluctance to give meaningful answers on Nkandla, is likely to manifest itself in further disturbances.
Fundamentally the deadlock is embedded in our political system. Until there is electoral reform and executive power is curtailed, the malaise will continue long after Zuma has left office. If the reforms don’t come to pass, violence beyond the walls of parliament is almost inevitable.
Songezo Zibi is the editor of Business Day