Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s Online Letter
Dear friends and fellow South Africans,
On 3 June this year, Parliament held a Joint Sitting of the National Assembly and National Council of Provinces to debate the 2010 FIFA World Cup. With much fanfare, the House then adjourned and our national festivities began.
Next Wednesday, some ten weeks later, a Joint Sitting will again convene to debate South Africa’s successful hosting of the World Cup. In the intervening period, little of significance happened in Parliament.
But this week, MPs gathered in the House for the first time since June and hit the ground running. The first sitting saw the second reading debate on the South African Reserve Bank Amendment Bill, and the IFP registered its dissent. The question must be asked why the finalization of this Bill was top of the agenda after such a long recess period.
As the IFP pointed out, the Bill was being finalized before parties even had the opportunity to hold their first caucus. Yet there is nothing urgent about the Bill. Why then did the Standing Committee on Finance process it in a single morning, during a week in recess in which no other committee met?
It is important to note that public inputs on this Bill were, without exception, negative, and the Reserve Bank required that the Committee keep all documentation secret. This is reminiscent of Eskom’s proposed price hikes, where the Committee on Public Enterprises was required to approve tariff increases while the actual figures remained a secret, and public input was likewise wholly negative.
One cannot help but wonder how seriously Government takes the interests, concerns and ideas of its people. Is there really transparency in governance, or do our leaders have blanket authority to withhold information and ignore dissent, all in the name of the national interest? One need not even allude to the debate around media freedom.
During the first ten years of democracy, as the Minister of Home Affairs, my Department faced the mammoth task of transforming the entire legislative field of migration management. In preparing a Green Paper, White Paper and draft Bills, I included more stages of public participation and consultation than the Rules of Parliament even required.
We even opened the migration discussion to the international stage, inviting experts from around the world to a conference in which they could consider, criticize and inform our draft legislation and policy directions.
This was an expression of my belief that public participation is the cornerstone of democracy. The people must be informed, heard and taken seriously. For every input we received on our immigration bills, my office prepared a substantial response, evaluating the arguments and explaining the reasons for the inclusion or rejection of every comment. This was enormously time consuming and laborious. But I keenly felt the responsibility to put citizens before bureaucracy; a responsibility which seems to be slipping from the shoulders of government.
I was pleased that my legacy of dialogue continued through the Immigration Advisory Board (IAB) which I established in 2004. The following year, during the launch of the Report of the Global Commission on International Migration, the IAB’s Chairperson announced a conference in preparation for South Africa’s participation in the United Nations’ High Level Dialogue on International Migration and Development.
Having chaired the G77 and China and hosted its Coordinating Mechanism on the issues of migration, South Africa’s contribution to the High Level Dialogue (HLD) carried great significance. The IAB published a Call for Papers and all interested parties, be they academic, non-governmental, business, civil society, foreigners or officials, were invited to make inputs on six broad migration themes.
But the IAB became sidelined and the conference never took place. Instead a workshop was held for specific invited role players just two weeks before the HLD, so that the voice of business and NGOs could carry into the inputs of the South African Government. A report from the workshop only became available after the HLD and one wonders how anything the public said could have influenced government’s position on such short notice.
Of course one cannot point fingers and say that this is where the decline started. But it is clear that over the years there has been a marked decrease in the weight given to public consultation and public inputs. This does not bode well for democracy. I often quote Abraham Lincoln’s maxim that no man is good enough to govern another man without his consent.
Democracy is not meant to be exercised every five years through the ballot box. It is intended as a living, unbroken dialogue between the people and their chosen representatives. The poor voter turnout in July’s municipal by-elections confirms that even local elections are not the best vehicle for dialogue at community level. Interaction needs to be continuous in an environment where public input is valued and taken seriously.
It is interesting that a recent IPSOS Markinor opinion poll showed a decline in voter support for almost every opposition party, including the DA, since 2009, while support for the ANC has marginally increased. Even a marginal increase is significant, as it tips the ANC into the two thirds majority it so clearly desires.
Why is support for opposition parties dropping? One of the ID’s clever slogans is "More Voice for Your Vote". But a problem arises when the electorate feels their voice carries no weight, no matter which party it is channelled through. Opposition parties can become as loud as they like.
Unless we address the pervasive undercurrent that bureaucracy trumps citizens, the ruling Party will continue to view itself as good enough to govern, even when the people stop consenting.
Yours in the service of the nation,
Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi MP
