MARIANNE MERTEN: Show of presidential accountability little more than ticking boxes

When President Cyril Ramaphosa takes to the podium on Thursday in the tent in the parking lot that doubles up as the parliamentary chamber, he will inevitably be pressed to answer on Phala Phala and his justice minister’s coffee shop loan. If past performance is anything to go by, he’ll likely sidestep both.

Presidential question time in the house is presented as an accountability mechanism, but it tends to play out as a choreographed show. And when it comes to Phala Phala Ramaphosa has been helped by the prosecuting service’s decision not to prosecute anyone over the dollar-stuffed sofa cushions on the presidential game farm. Already the tax authorities and the SA Reserve Bank have deemed all to have been above board. Having invoked process — and now that the process is done — it’s a case of “nothing to see here” for the president.

A simple “no” will deal with the clumsy, garbled 160-word question on the debacle from MK parliamentary head John Hlophe, the impeached Western Cape judge president. He wants Ramaphosa to answer questions related to the dead-in-the-buffalo-grass 2022 impeachment attempt — specifically, the independent report concluding that the president had questions to answer. In December 2022 the ANC, then still governing alone, used its numbers to nix that report and any impeachment proceedings. 

Ramaphosa is in a good place, having cunningly transmuted the ANC’s collapse at the ballot box into national unity government kumbaya, while retaining key controls. In doing so he’s lowered the volume of the formerly vocal opposition and sidelined grumblings from alliance partners Cosatu and the SA Communist Party, which also serve in his cabinet. It has been a political master stroke, and it gives Ramaphosa choices.

One of these could be to choose substance over spin in presidential question time. It would be a tribute to the principled late Reserve Bank governor and finance and labour minister, Tito Mboweni. SA’s first democratically elected president, Nelson Mandela, held parliament in high regard and considered it central to democracy. He sent notes to then speaker Frene Ginwala when he wanted to attend, though he was told he need not ask for permission.

In his March 26 1999 retirement farewell address Mandela told MPs: “For my part, I wish to say that it has been a profound privilege to be accountable to this parliament”. He would tackle gravy train criticism against his administration, pointing to the constitution, “a spirit of unprecedented consensus-seeking” and widespread consultation and public participation.

“Look at the 100 laws on average that have been passed by this legislature each year,” Mandela said, commending parliament. “These have been no trivial laws nor mere adjustments to an existing body of statutes. They have created a framework for the revolutionary transformation of society and of government itself, so that the legacy of our past can be undone and put right.”

Much has changed since. Parliament on average passes fewer than two dozen laws a year. The ANC used its parliamentary majority until the May 29 election to force through statutory appointments and legislation such as the Electoral Amendment Act and the National Health Insurance Act, and to get itself and its office-bearers out of pickles from Nkandla to Phala Phala and state capture.

This has fed public distrust of parliament. Saying government is fighting corruption isn’t the same as doing it. In various global state of democracy data sets SA emerges as a democratic backslider. Corruption — within the state, across the state and between the state and the private sector — tops reasons for this democratic erosion.

Justice minister Thembi Simelane’s coffee shop loan — through a VBS Mutual Bank fixer who is now on trial for corruption — while Polokwane invested R349m in the mutual bank under her mayorship, violating public finance rules, remains a stain on good and ethical governance. Ramaphosa could choose to announce a solid sanction against Simelane on Thursday, giving substance not only to clean governance but also to meaningful parliamentary oversight.

Or not. Presidential question time could remain a mere box-ticking exercise to spin the Ramaphosa administration’s PR.

• Merten is a veteran political journalist specialising in parliament and governance.