National Assembly speaker Didiza survives motion of no-confidence

National Assembly speaker Thoko Didiza has survived a motion of no-confidence sponsored by the EFF that sought to remove her from office over her refusal to challenge President Cyril Ramaphosa’s court application to halt the impeachment committee.

Didiza survived the motion after 282 members of parliament voted against the motion while only 101 voted for it.

The motion into Didiza was rejected by almost all Government of National Unity (GNU) political parties represented in parliament which hold a total of 287 of the 400 seats in the National Assembly.

ActionSA and Bosa, which are not necessarily in the GNU, also voted against the motion.

On the side of the EFF was the MK Party, ATM, ACDP and others.

In their motion, the EFF, represented by its leader, Julius Malema, said it had lost confidence in Dididza’s continued running of the National Assembly in parliament.

The motion by the EFF followed Didiza’s refusal to challenge the court interdict by Ramaphosa which sought to halt the impeachment proceedings into him over the Phala Phala foreign currency and theft incident pending his judicial review of the section 89 panel report which found he had a prima facie case to answer.

Instead of challenging the court interdict, Didiza instead opted to tell the court that she would abide by any decision the court arrived at.

This decision antagonised most of the parties represented in parliament, including those in the GNU such as the DA.

Malema argued that Didiza’s decision not to oppose the judicial review, and her decision to seek legal opinion from a former treasurer-general of the ANC Matthews Phosa who advised that she should opt to abide, warranted her removal.

“These two instances are a grave abdication of duty because the speaker, as head of the legislature, is ultimately the custodian of the Section 89 independent report and ought to defend parliament’s process from being compromised and halted by the executive through the judiciary. She has failed to do this because she is partisan,” said Malema.

“All of these partisan decisions can be traced back to the fact that when parliament voted on whether to establish an impeachment committee, the then member of parliament Thoko Didiza voted ‘no’ and was part of those who voted illegally. Now as the speaker of the national assembly, her attitude towards this process remains ‘no’ because she does not want the president held accountable. She did not want accountability then and she does not want accountability now.”

But the ANC rejected this notion, with its chief whip, Mdumiseni Ntuli, arguing in parliament that Didiza actually fulfilled her constitutional mandate as she ensured that the impeachment committee was set up in just 25 days after the Constitutional Court judgment, which said the Section 89 panel report must be referred to the committee.

Ntuli argued that the EFF was essentially seeking Didiza’s removal because they were bitter over their loss after the court upheld Ramaphosa’s interdict.

“If we remove a speaker every time a losing party in a legal dispute dislikes how she understands her own constitutional and institutional role we would have created a precedent far more dangerous than anything alleged in this motion. We would have told every future speaker that their security of tenure depends not on lawful conduct but on satisfying the loudest voices in the room on any given day whether rational or irrational. This will plunge this institution, the national assembly, into chaos and create a constitutional crisis,” said Ntuli.

“We cannot allow the EFF’s strange way of thinking to prevail. It is dangerous. It is unsustainable. I ask this house to firmly reject the motion and the political gymnastics of the EFF. And the ANC stands on record that we are firmly opposed to this motion. Not only because it is against the speaker who happens to be a member and a leader of the ANC but because the facts before us and the people of South Africa confirm that to decide otherwise would be dereliction of duty on our part as members of the national assembly and we would be acting on the basis of wrong information and wrong understanding of what precisely constitutes the tasks and responsibilities attended to the speaker of national assembly.”

The DA’s Glynnis Breytenbach said that as much the DA believed Didiza erred in how she handled the interdict matter, it was not enough to warrant her removal.

“The question before us is not whether the speaker made a mistake, she has. The question is whether those shortcomings are of such a nature and magnitude that this house should conclude that she has fundamentally failed to discharge the responsibilities of her office and should therefore be removed,” said Breytenbach.

“On that question, the Democratic Alliance’s answer is ‘no’. We do not believe that the case has been made. The speaker has, notwithstanding our disagreements with her, continued to facilitate the constitutional work of this house. Following the constitutional court’s judgment concerning the Section 89 process she established the required impeachment committee, she referred the relevant matters to it and put the necessary parliamentary processes in place. Parliament has in fact proceeded with the work required by that judgment.”

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