Veteran ANC politician and Minister in the Presidency, Jeff Radebe, called on South Africans to show more respect for Parliament. He says Parliament deserves to be respected by the citizens of the country.
I agree with the Minister, at least to some extend. Parliament theoretically deserves to be respected. The reason why we do not respect ours is to be found in the very definition of the word respect. According to Webster’s Dictionary, respect means: “a feeling of admiring someone or something that is good, valuable, important etc.” Is that what our Parliament is?
Our Parliament is a place where you find members asleep or picking their noses when they are supposed to be doing good, valuable and important work. Our Parliament is a place frequently resembling a low-class nightclub where people are forcefully evicted by bouncers. Our Parliament is a place where the most senior man regularly gives an idiotic chuckle at his own incompetence.
Our Parliament is a place where you find frightfully stupid people who would stand up and claim, in all seriousness, that Van Riebeeck arrived in the country 2000 years ago!
Our Parliament is a place where you can witness on national television how a member beats another person with her handbag, not unlike the show during a half-drunken taxi-rank squabble about the last available seat. Our Parliament is a place where the president stands up and says: “I did not lie” while an entire country knows that he did.
Our Parliament is a place where acts such as BEE, Affirmative Action, Land Expropriation, and numerous others- crudely trampling on the very freedom and well-being of the citizenry, are being pushed through.
Our Parliament is a place where the Minister of Defense admits to using government assets to assist an illegal immigrant on a false passport into the country.
Our Parliament, Minister Radebe, is a joke.
Yes, in a “normal” country with a “normal” society the people of the country will, and have to, respect their Parliament. In this one, for the love of God, we cannot find any reason to do so.
Read the original article by Daniel Lötter on Front Nasionaal SA – blad
