Name-calling, heckling and snide remarks seemed to be the order of the day as the Western Cape Legislature met this week.
|||Cape Town - If the raucous debate, name-calling, heckling and snide remarks in the Western Cape Legislature about party election nomination lists are anything to go by, we have entered the pre-election “silly season”.
Erratic outbursts, interjections and objections, and allegations of stealing from the poor were some of the ingredients that defined the sitting of the legislature on Thursday.
During the four-hour session, epithets were hurled at the DA, mostly by ANC chief whip Pierre Uys, including “the directionless DA is like a beached whale that goes from bad to worse”.
There was also “the split personality DA is in shameful disarray”, “schizophrenic DA”, and “psychopathic DA”.
The ANC was accused of stealing from the poor in the Oudtshoorn municipality where the ANC-dominated council is still clinging to power despite an earlier by-election shifting the majority to the DA.
Even Local Government MEC Anton Bredell got rowdy, going as far as to say the municipality’s lawyer “should be struck from the roll”.
The ANC’s Max Ozinsky asked whether Bredell was allowed to question the bona fides of an officer of the court. Speaker Richard Majola said the MEC had expressed himself in Afrikaans and he would need to read the transcripts before ruling.
Transport MEC Robin Carlisle was particularly loud, accusing the ANC of stealing from the poor.
Lynne Brown (ANC) interjected, but Carlisle said he was merely explaining “that the Speaker in Oudtshoorn is stealing his salary from the poor”.
Brown hit back, wanting to know if the same could not be said of Human Settlements MEC Bonginkosi Madikizela, if he did not build the number of houses he was supposed to build.
Later, Bredell accused Uys of conniving with ANC provincial chairman Marius Fransman during the ANC’s recent nomination list processes to ensure branches in the stronghold of the ANC’s Mcebisi Skwatsha could not vote.
The heckling continued throughout the debate on the socio-economic state since the DA has been in power, with both sides accusing the other of lying to the public.
warda.meyer@inl.co.za
Cape Argus