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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.