EFF'S REPREHENSIBLE CONDUCT
21 August 2014
The African National Congress in Parliament condemns in the strongest terms a clearly orchestrated plan by the EFF Members of Parliament to disrupt today's sitting of the National Assembly. The disruptions and chaos caused by the EFF MPs in the House confirms an anonymous warning we received earlier today about a plan to disrupt today's sitting, in which the President was scheduled to answer questions from Members of Parliament. The EFF MPs deliberately used their leader's turn to pose a question to the President as an opportunity to cause chaos and disruption.
The House was adjourned to allow the security to remove the mischief-makers and to restore order in the House. Following extensive consultations with all stakeholders, including with opposition parties, a decision was taken by Parliament to release the President and reschedule the question and answer session. We commend all our Members of Parliament, including those of the opposition parties, for remaining calm and dignified in the face of such blatant provocation and contempt.
Indeed such abhorrent conduct ought to be shunned by all those who value our hard-fought multiparty system of Parliament and constitutional democracy. What has transpired today, as with other such acts that occurred previously, is not a political challenge to the ANC, but a clear attack on legitimate democratic institutions with an aim of undermining the democratic values upon which our country is founded.
We thank the President for honouring his obligation and appearing in Parliament to account to the people of South Africa through his response to parliamentary questions. We also commend him for demonstrating laudable statesmanship even under extreme provocation. It is regrettable that this important opportunity for the President to address the public on a wide range of issues of national importance has been temporarily delayed.
As the ANC, we will at all times defend our people's hard-won democracy and protect it against those who are clearly working relentlessly to undermine it and cause anarchy.
We therefore eagerly await the outcome of the consultation process currently underway within Parliament on the appropriate response to today's reprehensible conduct by the EFF. We call upon the relevant organ of the institution to impose the strongest appropriate sanction that will ensure that such conduct does not recur.
Today's deliberate and planned anarchy is a further confirmation that the EFF does not see Parliament and legislatures as forums for the contestation of ideas, advancement of superior arguments and space for pursuit of alternative policies through superior arguments.
Instead, the party see these democratic institutions as a jungle where there is intolerance of differing views and where their opinions are forced unto others through thuggery, mayhem and dastardliness. Such reprehensible behaviour might be hailed in certain quarters as radicalism, but in reality it is pure anarchism and blatant disrespect to constitutional institutions. Anarchism can never be a substitute for vibrant and superior ideas.
Statement issued by the Office of the ANC Chief Whip, August 21 2014
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