South African Speaker's integrity questioned

By M.S. Prabhakara

CAPE TOWN, JUNE 9. As was to be expected, the motion of confidence in the Speaker, Dr. Frene Ginwala, moved by the African National Congress, was carried by the National Assembly on Thursday.

A significant feature of the voting was the decision of Mr. Andrew Feinstein, the ANC member whose differences with the ANC leadership on the issue of inclusion of the so-called Heath Unit in the arms deal probe is well known, to abstain from voting.

The Inkatha Freedom Party, which is part of the Government, also abstained.

The motion was moved in the context of the ``open letter'' to the Speaker written by Mr. Bantu Holomisa, the leader of the United Democratic Movement, accusing her of not conducting herself impartially in matters connected with the parliamentary probe into allegations of corruption and kickbacks in the multibillion rand arms deal.

Specifically, Mr. Holomisa charged the Speaker of using her office to undermine what the Opposition parties describe as a ``resolution of the National Assembly'' calling for the inclusion of the Special Investigative Unit headed by Judge Willem Heath in the probe, as recommended in a report prepared by Parliament's Joint Standing Committee on Public Accounts.

The Speaker took exception to the letter and demanded that Mr. Holomisa should retract his charges and apologise. This Mr. Holomisa has refused to do.

The Opposition parties wanted the issue to be referred to a select committee of the House so that the charges could be investigated.

The ANC, however, refused to take this route which it saw as a transparent ploy by the Opposition to secure another platform for grandstanding.

Instead, it opted for a debate in the House on a motion of confidence in the Speaker. Given the relative strengths of the ANC and other parties, there was no doubt about the outcome.

Going beyond the interpretation put by the Speaker on the ``recommendation'' in the Scopa Report of October 30 last year, at issue is the position of the Speaker in any democratically elected Parliament.

In the view of the Opposition parties, the fact that Dr. Ginwala is an active and senior leader of the ANC, holding positions in its highest structures, by definition disqualifies her from being an impartial arbiter in the affairs of the House, compromising her position as Speaker.

Even though Dr. Ginwala has in her first term and in the two years of her present term taken decisions which have not gone down well with one or the other political parties (including the ANC), this is the first time that her integrity has been openly questioned.

This is because the controversy over the interpretation of the Scopa report is really a sideshow, a red herring to divert attention from the real objective of the Opposition parties which is to portray majority rule as intrinsically undemocratic, to delegitimise the ANC-led Government and, by extension, the liberation movement.

The ``tyranny of the majority'', an expression often heard these days, is feared only because the majority is democratically elected; and given the logic of universal adult franchise and the demographic reality, is necessarily a black majority.

Rather typically, the example of Britain where a member on being elected as the Speaker resigns from the political party on whose ticket he or she got elected was cited as the ideal example to be emulated by South Africa. Few in the Opposition would even deign to consider that there are any number of equally vibrant and far less sanctimonious democracies where this practice is not followed.

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