Zuma's speech tainted by the elephant herd in the room

Here we are - a nation in crisis. The unemployment rate is rocketing, especially among the young, underprivileged and black. Rising inequality is threatening the foundation of the collective nation-building effort of the past 22 years, with racism and racial tensions rearing their ugly heads.

Economic growth is sluggish, with some sectors already experiencing technical recession, and the spectre of a ratings downgrade to junk haunts our nation.

Yet on what is supposed to be one of the most important days on our political calendar, the official opening of parliament, we are distracted by disruptions that have little to do with these pressing matters and everything to do with cheap political scoring.

The drama that played itself out during the joint sitting on Thursday night may have increased viewership ratings for various TV stations - it may have even provided some comic relief to viewers long suffering from the predictable dramas they are force-fed every weeknight - but it was a sad indictment of our body politic.

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It is a relief, of course, that the hour-long stand-off between parliament and the EFF MPs did not result in the brutality we witnessed during the same ceremony a year ago.

But that the proceedings were held to ransom for an hour as the red berets skilfully used every trick in the parliamentary rule book - and outside it - to delay President Jacob Zuma from delivering his state of the nation address indicates that the political system has not matured enough for parliament, the office of the president and other state institutions to enjoy utmost respect from all quarters.

But the EFF and its leader, Julius Malema, are not the only ones to blame for undermining these institutions. Their actions may be brazenly obstructive and objectionable, but they alone should not shoulder the blame for tarnishing the image and eroding the status of parliament and the Presidency.

The Constitutional Court is yet to deliver its ruling on the EFF and the DA's bid to force Zuma, his executive and parliament to implement public protector Thuli Madonsela's recommendations on upgrades at the president's private homestead in Nkandla.

However, much of what transpired in court this week can only lead us to one conclusion: the majority party in the National Assembly has, during the past year, systematically undermined the integrity of this august institution by embarking on a parliamentary committee process whose sole objective was to shield the head of state from paying for the undue benefits he accrued from the R246-million upgrades at his homestead.

The concessions made by Zuma's lawyers in court - including their admission that an investigation report compiled by Police Minister Nathi Nhleko absolving the president of any payments "carries no weight" - imply that the ANC-dominated parliamentary committee that pushed for the adoption of the report never did its work properly.

For more than a year, parliament almost ground to a halt as the ANC majority refused to have the public protector's recommendations implemented and ignored her plea that the president take the recommendations to court for a review. Instead, some of the MPs, including senior party leaders, called Madonsela nasty names.

Now, such actions may not be as dramatic and noisy as Malema and his cohorts disrupting proceedings during a sitting, but they have the same destructive effect on the credibility of both the constitutional institutions they attack and those they utilise to launch such attacks.

In all of this, the president cannot escape blame. Zuma could have saved the nation much pain, and money - when you consider how much some of his current advocates are reputed to be earning a day - by listening to calls that he take the matter up for review when the report came out in 2014.

block_quotes_start The lack of a progress report on Nene's new role fuels suspicions that the highly regarded former minister was axed for reasons other than those given late last year block_quotes_end

Having now told the courts that he has always been willing to pay and that he now accepts that the public protector's findings are binding, Zuma would have gone a long way in restoring his tattered image as head of state had he used his address on Thursday to apologise to the nation for the harm caused by his earlier stance.

It would have been a great gesture of goodwill on his part to acknowledge the damage caused to the office of the public protector by the attitude and utterances of ANC MPs and leaders who genuinely believed that they were doing what they were doing in defence of an "unfairly treated" president.

It was also a missed opportunity on the president's part not to update the nation on the latest regarding former finance minister Nhlanhla Nene, whom he removed from office in December last year - ostensibly because he was the country's candidate to head the regional office of the Brics bank.

Nene's removal wiped out over R150-billion in the financial markets, sent the rand tumbling and pushed the country closer to have its ratings declared as "junk" by international rating agencies.

The lack of a progress report on Nene's new role fuels suspicions that the highly regarded former minister was axed for reasons other than those given late last year.

Such suspicions do not inspire confidence, especially in the private sector, which Zuma has been aggressively courting in the past week in a bid to boost the economy.

Thursday's speech would probably go down, from the business community's perspective, as one of the best state of the nation addresses Zuma has delivered since he took office in 2009. It certainly touched on many of the issues that the community is concerned about - from the country's diminishing image as an attractive investment destination to policy certainty in troubled sectors such as mining.

Zuma's greatest challenge is the trust deficit. He has gained a notorious reputation for his policy flip-flops and one can never tell if his seemingly pro-business speech this year would not be replaced by a pro-Cosatu address next year as he tries to get his "left" allies to fall in line ahead of the 2017 ANC elective conference.

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Unions, especially in the public sector, would be happy, though, that a raft of government cost-cutting measures proposed by Zuma on Thursday does not include retrenchments and the reduction of the civil service, regarded by experts as bloated.

They would also celebrate his latest policy U-turn, this time on the pension fund reform legislation he recently signed.

The amended legislation - which would have seen a category of workers being prevented from cashing in their pensions in full when they retire or resign - will no longer come into effect on March 1 after Cosatu's protests.

Zuma's proposal to curtail the number of overseas trips and reduce the size of delegations is likely to gain universal support.

However, there will clearly be a showdown between the president and the DA-led Western Cape and the City of Cape Town over Zuma's statement that the maintenance of two capitals - Pretoria and Cape Town - is "too expensive".

DA MPs see this as the latest bid to have parliament moved to Gauteng and say they will fight the move.

Overall, Zuma's speech was a good one as it provided details on future projects and reported back on the progress of the nine-point plan announced last year.

One shortcoming was that the speech did not address what Zuma's own party, the ANC, regards as the greatest threat to its government - state capture by business people who use their access to politicians for advantage over others in government deals.

To regain the confidence of a suspicious public and would-be investors, Zuma should have confronted the elephant in the room by tackling claims that his friends the Gupta family get preferential treatment on transactions because of their proximity to the president.