Until Sona 2023, no presiding officer had called in armed, armoured and camouflaged security forces into the chamber of lawmakers. Here’s why such a call for the deployment of police – an executive instrument – is troubling.
The fallout after the President’s State of the Nation Address (Sona) continues in Parliament, where an EFF motion of no confidence in National Assembly Speaker Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula is being processed and the Rules Committee is considering the disruptions.
What broke the proverbial camel’s back was when Mapisa-Nqakula became the first presiding officer in democratic South Africa to call armed, armoured and camouflage-clad security forces into the House.
That members of the presidential counter-assault unit, judging from their camouflage uniforms, and others like presidential bodyguards, took no time to get there indicates there was detailed backroom planning, as did having coppers at the ready nearby.
Crucially, security forces, including the police, are instruments of the executive, a separate sphere of state to the national legislature that has its own parliamentary protection service.
Up until 9 February 2023, disruptions, even at State of the Nation Addresses, were dealt with by Parliament’s own security service as the law and parliamentary rules provide.
The trigger for security force deployment at Sona 2023? Some EFF MPs taking their protest against Cyril Ramaphosa and his Phala Phala farm forex scandal to the side of the stage where the President was sitting.
Whether that was an immediate threat to life so as to justify calling in armed and armoured security forces under the 2004 Powers, Privileges and Immunities of Parliament and Provincial Legislatures Act depends on which side you find yourself on.
For Cabinet, it was the right thing to do.
“Generally, South Africa is happy how police have acted,” said Minister in the Presidency Mondli Gungubele during last Thursday’s televised Cabinet briefing on 16 February. “You know in South Africa there is a limitation of rights and security is a very critical matter. I think police decided to err on the side of caution,” he said.
For the EFF, Mapisa-Nqakula calling in the cops violated the Constitution and rules, “disqualified her as a legitimate Speaker” and thus triggered the EFF’s motion of no confidence against her.
She “made it worse by calling the security forces of South Africa to enter the chambers to intimidate peaceful members of Parliament,” EFF leader Julius Malema said, later adding: “Those who are in power, if they do not have answers, they may be tempted ...