Durban – If the Speaker of the National Assembly had a mute button on her sound system, like the one at Durban City Hall, then Thursday night’s chaotic disruptions might not have happened.
That is what Logie Naidoo, the former Speaker of the eThekwini council, said when he watched the proceedings, and the insults and punch-ups unfolding on television before President Jacob Zuma finally got down to his State of the Nation Address.
Naidoo was watching the SONA proceedings at Coastlands Hotel in uMhlanga.
Naidoo, also a former deputy mayor, said that when he was the eThekwini council Speaker, he would press the mute button next to his microphone to cut off an out-of-order councillor, thereby silencing him and denying him a platform.
“When you make a ruling – whether right or wrong – it is final, and you have to observe the rules. If the Speaker had a button, she could have stopped all this. I don’t think she had one.”
Did he use his mute button at council meetings much?
“I did it at every meeting,” he recalled.
The EFF, who were eventually evicted from Parliament, did not understand the rules about a point of order, Naidoo said.
The EFF – as a result of their behaviour – had not shown any respect for the country’s constitution and democracy.
There were rules about dignity and decorum and how people should conduct themselves in Parliament, Naidoo said.
Referring to the pandemonium, Naidoo said similar incidents happened in other countries – he cited India and Russia – but he added that it was not good for South Africa and the country’s democracy.
“This is anarchy. We can’t afford that in our democracy. It will lead to anarchy in society."
“It is not nation-building: it will cause more divisions.”
He said the call by DA chief whip John Steenhuisen for Parliament to observe a minute’s silence for the “Esidimeni 94” patients – whom Steenhuisen said had “died in the greatest human tragedy since Marikana” – should have been observed on compassionate grounds.
Turning to Zuma’s State of the Nation address, which started about 75 minutes late, Naidoo said the president had covered some very important issues, especially about growing the economy.
“He made the important point that if the majority were not involved in the economy, you couldn’t expand it and maintain its sustainability,” he said.
Naidoo welcomed the R100 million that was to be spent on programmes to modernise the ports “because Durban would benefit”.