DA MOTION ILL-ADVISED AND PREMATURE

9 November 2016

The African National Congress in Parliament will not support the motion of no confidence against President Jacob Zuma called by the DA on Thursday. 

We respect the constitutionally-enshrined right of any parliamentary party to table a motion of no confidence in the President as a tool of parliamentary oversight and accountability. However the motions by the DA have become ritualistic practices founded on spurious allegations and narrow political motives rather than substance. Since the start of the current term of Parliament, which is just over two years old, a total of seven motions have been tabled by the opposition. 

It is worth stating the obvious fact that one does not need substantial grounds or any evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the President to call for a motion of no confidence in terms of Section 102 of the Constitution. This has thus opened the floodgates of abuse of Parliament’s time and undermining of the electoral will of the people, through the opposition’s whimsical and arbitrary invocation of this motion on a regular basis for sheer grandstanding.

By calling for this motion, ostensibly on account of the Public Protector's State of the Capture report, the DA is deliberately putting the cart before the horse. The report of the Public Protector has not made any definitive guilty findings or conclusive orders against any implicated individual, let alone President Jacob Zuma. Instead, it has brought to the fore a wide range of crucial but inconclusive matters which must be thoroughly dealt with by the Judicial Commission of Inquiry. 

We are fully supportive of the establishment of this Commission and its objectives. It must indeed get to the bottom of this vexing matter of state capture - which must be exposed and dismantle it if proven to exist. In fact, the ANC would be the first to table such a motion if the Commission was to find the actuality of state capture and the complicity of some of our leaders in such abominable phenomenon. We remain unwavering in our commitment to eradicate corruption.

The frivolity of this motion is that it claims guilt of state capture on the part of the President when none in fact exist in the report. Parliament and the nation are therefore dragged into the opposition’s petty games of political stunts and posturing.

Statement issued by the Office of the ANC Chief Whip, 9 November 2016