SONA military employment: Zuma in breach of Constitution

8 February 2017

The Secretary to Parliament, Gengezi Mgidlana, today confirmed that Jacob Zuma was in breach of the Constitution in 2016 when he failed to write to Parliament informing it that 188 members of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) would be employed for service during the opening of Parliament.

This acknowledgement was made during a meeting of opposition parties and the Speaker over the militarisation of the State of the Union Address (SONA), convened on our request.

Section 201(4) of the Constitution states that the employment of the defence force may only be authorised by the President, as head of the national executive, and that the president “must provide the information … to the appropriate oversight committee”.  What this means is that the employment of SANDF personnel at Parliament has never before been referred to or approved by the Joint Standing Committee on Defence, as required by the Constitution.

The speaker has committed to releasing a statement clarifying the exact nature of the employment of SANDF members, specifically where the soldiers will be stationed and positioned. Clarity is indeed required as the President’s letter states that 441 “[m]embers of the SANDF employed will be assisting the SAPS to maintain law and order during the opening of Parliament”. We will study this statement closely.

We call on the Secretary to Parliament to correct his previous statements on the securitisation of the Parliamentary precinct. Mgidlana has repeatedly insisted that there is nothing unusual about the large-scale deployment of security personnel to Parliament. However, this has been shown to be patently untrue and is, in fact, misinformation.

Replies to written parliamentary questions previously submitted by the DA shows that the deployment of SAPS members in Parliament during SONA events have increased nearly threefold over a decade, from 108 in 2004 to 296 in 2014. At the same time, SANDF members employed at Parliament increased from 168 in 2013, to 188 in 2015, to 441 in 2017. We will be submitting further questions following SONA 2017 to ascertain just how many hundreds of security forces were deployed this year.

The securitisation of the parliamentary precinct is the antithesis of a “People’s Parliament” and nowhere is this more self-evident than the increasing militarisation of SONA

Issued by John Steenhuisen, Chief Whip of the Democratic Alliance, 8 February 2017