Date: 18/03/2010
Source: African National Congress
Title: ANC: Sisulu: Speech by the Minister of Defence and Military Veterans, in the debate on the vote of no confidence in President Jacob Zuma, Parliament

Mr
Speaker
Ministers and Deputy Ministers
Honourable Members
Ladies and
Gentlemen:

The vote of no confidence in President Zuma as proposed by COPE
is
fatally flawed. The claim that the President has failed to live up to
the
expectations of a broad spectrum of our society is nothing more than
a
desperate grab at some publicity by a bunch of media hyped people.
It
provides no specificity on what this "expectation" is in relation to
the
Constitution. Neither does it provide any evidence of the support
it
claims. But such hallucinations and reckless ambitions are to be
expected
from the leadership of COPE. It is the same party, as members
will remember,
that claimed that it would win the Eastern Cape outright
and co-govern in at
least 4 provinces. Such delusions of grandeur are
not uncommon. That is the
stuff of which these people are made of.

Mr Speaker,

This is a frivolous
motion that is an outright waste of our time. It
begs the question: why are
we even debating such silliness? How do we
come to even have it on our
order paper? But importantly: How do we as
parliament deal with such
frivolity in future?

Section 102 of the Constitution, from which I assume
this motion is
based, provides for a motion of no confidence. This
Constitutional
provision indicates "if the National Assembly, by a vote
supported by a
majority of its members, passes a motion of no confidence in
the
President, the President and the other members of the Cabinet and
any
Deputy Ministers must resign."

For this motion to pass it requires 50%
plus one of the Members of this
House.

It should be obvious for anyone who
is numerically literate that for
this motion to pass in this House, it will
require the endorsement of
the ANC, the majority party with 65.9% of the
vote. How did COPE think
they could pass a motion with only 7.4%?

For those
who are numerically challenged, it is important to note that
at this stage
of the debate, COPE's motion only has the support of 25%
of the total
Members in the House, made up of COPE, the DA (16.6%), the
ID (0.92%) and
UDM (0.85%). Should parliament be entertaining a motion
whose prospect of
success is so hopeless?

To protect themselves from such frivolity, a
democracy require a
threshold against which support can be measured. There
ought to be a
threshold not only of support, but also substance for a motion
of this
nature to even find its way on to a debate. It is this kind
of
stupidity we should not accept.

We verified the Parliamentary rules and
confirmed that "stupidity" is
not un-parliamentary. Albert Einstein once
said, "the definition of
stupidity was doing the same thing over and over
and hoping for
different results". COPE only managed 7.4% of the vote and
the result
is not going to change.

By entertaining frivolous motions of
this nature, this house may be
elevating ridiculous political immaturity to
an undeserved status. We
carry an absolute majority mandate in this House -
a mandate bestowed on
us by the electorate. The chances of a no confidence
motion against a
President being successful, unless emanating from the ANC
itself are so
remote as to be ridiculous and silly.

I have had occasion to
scrutinise the rules of Parliament and consulted
on the matter. I have
found no reference in our rules to how Parliament
can deal with such a waste
of time and resources. No rules could be
found on a vote of no
confidence.

Mr Speaker, we in the ANC would want to call for a review of
the rules
of Parliament, a matter which is long overdue. Specifically in
this
matter, the onus should be on a party proposing such a motion to
show
that it has a reasonable opportunity to carry through the
Constitutional
This will also ensure that there is no abuse of the
Constitution for
silly purposes, especially by the same people who always
grandstand on
the basis that they are protectors of the Constitution. We
must stop
this abuse. Calling for a motion of no confidence of a president
is a
serious business. It is not something to be taken lightly or used as
a
mere political gimmick.

The Constitution has a very serious provision
intended to allow
Parliament to use, should the President fail on those
matters that he is
constitutionally bound by. These are clearly spelt out
in sections 83
and 84. The allegations raised are not even remotely
connected to these
constitutional stipulations and have nothing to do with
the President's
constitutional obligations. Even if we were to grant a most
generous
interpretation to the motion, the main matter predates his
ascendancy to
office. You can start counting backwards!

COPE's latest
publicity stunt comes as no surprise. It is common
knowledge that COPE has
its own leadership challenge. The current
parliamentary leadership has been
accused of ineptitude. It has to
resort to theatrics to respond to
accusations that it has been upstaged
and outmaneuvered by the DA. It is
still being upstaged be the DA even
in this debate. They want to abuse
parliament to address their
leadership squabbles. Most embarrassing for them
is that their former
deputy leader has joined the ANC. She discovered what
we have always
known, that COPE is made up of motley of individuals that
have lost out
in a democratic contest. For them it has always been about
leadership.

Play the game, not the man. That is what has been so flawed
with your
politics, you have been playing the man and that has completely
blinded
your vision, you are obsessed with President Zuma.

One would
have thought that the leadership of the various parties who
spoke here would
have heeded the stately advice of the leader of Inkatha
Freedom Party in his
response to the President's State of the Nation
address, whose words are
worth repeating as they are steeped in wisdom
and democratic tradition.

"I respect the President, warts and all, because behind him, rightly
or
wrongly lies the will of the democratic mandate of 66% of the
South
African people. I could not hinder or oppose without opposing the
South
African people....I cannot afford to see the President and his
government
fail. If they fail, my own country fails. If the President and
his
government fail, I will not applaud and rejoice but weep. For if
they
fail, our liberation fails."

In an act of clutching at the straws,
and consumed by a vengeful spirit
COPE leadership tries to exploit the
president's willingness to accept
where he might have erred. The President
is not beyond criticism. He is
the last to suggest that. Where he failed us,
he is the first to
acknowledge and apologised and we, who constitute almost
66% of this
House, have forgiven him.

Here is a bitter pill for COPE to
swallow. Using last year's April
general election as a starting point, the
TNS Research survey showed
Zuma's approval level rose from 40% at the
beginning of 2009 to 52% at
the time of the election and stepped up to 58%
in November in the same
year. And yes, this is despite their serious
reservations concerning
Zuma's practice of polygamy leading Neil Higgs (TNS)
to argue that "it
is clear that many ordinary citizens separate their
approval of Mr Zuma
as President from his private life."

We are pleased
with the latest report compiled by the Bureau for
Economic Research and
which was published last week. It found that the
business confidence index
(BCI) "had risen 15 points to 43 in the
current quarter - the single biggest
increase in 16 years. Also, at 43
points, the BCI was back to the level
before the financial market crisis
erupted about 18 months ago". Economic
projections for the coming
financial year are encouraging.

But what galls
us now, is the sheer hypocrisy of his detractors. For
some he was the worst
nightmare to become a president. COPE's anger is
corrective in that it calls
for better and enhanced support. It is
motivated by the understanding that
more could be done. As such, they do
not identify or associate themselves
with those who harbour a passionate
and ideological dislike for Zuma. It is
the same masses that supported
him when all manner of abuse was thrown at
him. At the time, the
privileged amongst us were deafeningly silent when
state organs were
used to malign and violate his constitutional rights. They
are aware
that these same forces have emerged from the crevices where they
have
taken refuge.

To COPE, you are a bunch of sore losers, sour at
democracy. Turn your
attention to yourselves. Check with your erstwhile
friend, the
Honourable De Lille how her media hyped support very quickly
dwindled to
0.92%. It is in the nature of politics that the media can make
you out
to be more than you could ever be. Even as she is busy drumming
up
support for her coalition of the disgruntled, she will tell you
how
damaging it is to lose a Deputy President of an organisation.
It
happened to her. And now we have your treasured former Deputy
President,
Lynda Odendaal - she has seen the light.

This is not only because she
discovered what we have always known, that
COPE is made up of permanently
angry individuals who have lost out in a
democratic contest - but more
importantly because she knows it is only
the ANC that will address our
challenges as a nation. In COPE, old
destructive forces have emerged from
the crevices where they have taken
refuge. We stand ready to defend hard-won
freedoms from opportunism of
short-term irrational impulses.

The hypocrisy
is so sickening. Which one of the Honourable Members
sitting in your
individual glass houses would throw a stone. Honourable
Dandala, Shilowa,
Botha, Ngonyama. Should I go on?

Honourable Dandala, get out of COPE while
you can. It is a destructive
energy over positions, legitimized under your
bishops cloth. Get out
and go and serve the church.

I thank you