Ray of hope from parliament

04 August 2011 - 02:24 By Brendan Boyle
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Watching parliament in action is often quite disappointing so it is heartening to see a more positive episode unfolding.

ANC majorities dominate the 52 permanent committees monitoring executive institutions, excluding the Presidency. We, the people, get what the ANC wants us to have.

In many committees, such as defence now and sports under the previous chairman, Butana Komphela (mercifully redeployed), debate is a sham and consultation a procedural obligation that needs only to be ticked off so the ANC can do what it planned to do all along.

It was thus in the ad hoc committee on the Protection of Information Bill, when the ANC revived former intelligence minister Ronnie Kasrils's 2008 draft last year and tried again to regulate classification of state secrets and rein in an independent media.

The process began with the requisite public hearings at which the bill was panned even by Cosatu and the statutory Human Rights Commission.

There was a pretence of listening, but the ANC study group (the pre-meeting at which members get their orders) met regularly to stiffen the spines of anyone tempted by the arguments of the opposition and civil society.

When the committee began to go through the bill clause by clause, the ANC shut its ears even to the most reasonable argument.

And then something changed - not all at once, but in tentative steps towards the sort of process democracy requires.

Using the mechanism that delivered our Constitution - tackling the easiest issues first to build a foundation of co-operation and consensus and leaving the apparently impossible policy conflicts to last - the ANC, DA, ACDP and IFP began to find each other at least on some of the more obvious flaws.

The dangerously imprecise concept of "national interest" was removed, commercial secrets were dropped and it was eventually agreed that provision should be made for independent reviews and appeals.

I have absolutely no doubt that the cacophony of protest from society, including ANC veterans like the late Kader Asmal, Pallo Jordan and Kasrils, played a crucial part, as did international pressure. I'm also fairly sure voices of reason were raised in the party leadership, probably including Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe.

The three leading opposition delegates - Dene Smuts (DA), Steve Swart (ACDP) and Mario Ambrosini (IFP) - cemented each hard-won concession without gloating over their victories and ANC members found they could give ground without the sky falling down.

Since last week, the committee has met daily, often into the night, for up to 10 hours.

Sustained by coffee, cold drinks and bad snacks, MPs wrangle over the precise meaning of terms courts may one day need to assess and test the possibility of compromise on sticking points.

The ANC default remains to defend text before them until they get the signal to back down from their delegation leader, Luwellyn Landers, who learned about negotiating with an immovable force when he represented the Coloured Labour Party in PW Botha's tricameral parliament in the 1980s.

It is draining work requiring absolute concentration from the lead negotiators, the two state law advisers, Carin Booyse and Sisa Makabeni, who have to stay up and translate the progress made into legal language while everyone else goes home to dinner and bed, and from the representative of the privately funded Parliamentary Monitoring Group, usually Susan Williams, who tirelessly minutes debate for the PMG website.

The mood lightens at times and first names slip into conversation across the aisle until someone feels slighted and chairman Cecil Burgess (ANC) reinforces the protocol of addressing each other as "the honorable".

Ambrosini is so frustrated at times he seems on the verge of tears. Smuts allows herself an occasional snort of derision when ANC members deny the logic of an argument a six-year-old would grasp. Swart pursues the least bad option with religious patience.

Landers can argue as well as any ANC loyalist that white really is black, but when compromises come, they come from him and sometimes take his chorus line by surprise.

What emerges from this is likely still to be a bad bill, but itmay just be constitutional. It may not be the death knell of our press and it may be a monument to the diligence of a few good men and women who were prepared, according to their lights, to apply themselves in a way many MPs don't know is possible, to doing the right thing.

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