I used to be a member of the Budget and Finance Committee from the year 2000. You may have been surprised when I came back and I said to you, I do not want to be part of that Committee. We had been reduced as a Parliamentary Committee to wars that were personal. Every other meeting that we were having were stories that were being brought by the then Hon. Kereke to the Committee and we would spend hours debating those things. In one instance, the issue was about bringing Meikles for a discussion. I personally was taken on because I was now being accused for having been paid by John Moxon. I had taken it to the Committee to say I do not think it should be the Committee’s business to be following personal wars. I am giving that as an example of saying it is not possible to have things happening in this country as long as the in-fighting, the factions, the issues around succession dominate the issue around this. It will not work. We need to deal with it, we need to address it.
Mr. Speaker, Parliament is only one; right now we have a Judiciary that is at war with itself, not with others, with itself. The whole debate around the Chief Justice and the way it is written not in private papers but in Government papers is indicative of the kind of disunity, the kind of disagreement that exist. I will not go to the twitter or to the social media but you can read the kind of problems that exist that disunity, you cannot convince me that against that disunity, we can run a country. I spoke about the Judiciary, Executive; I am not sure whether the Budget that the Hon. Minister brought in this House has the agreement of all his other Cabinet Ministers because it was not true of the last review. In fact we are beginning to read again in these newspapers, a lot of other of his Executive members challenging the whole basis of that process.
Therefore, I think we need to address that illness because until we address that foundational thing, we cannot build on a weak foundation because nothing will come through. I have my own thesis that I am going to put on the table. This is my thesis, “we have in this country a President that has been taken into captivity,” and I will explain to you in what manner. Mr. Speaker, if you drive down Borrowdale two days before the President came, they were now fixing the road so the President in my opinion does not see what happens in this country and I have asked so many times in this House, let us have an audience with him.
Mr. Speaker, because of these divisions if I were to move to this House and say please can we have the President so that we can have a conversation with the President as a legislator, people will refuse. Some will say we will be said we are in faction A, some will say we will be said we are in faction B. So, what I am requesting my other colleagues on the other side who have no seats to lose is we are doing a petition and asking the President to meet with us, closed doors but we need to tell the President what is going on.
South African is talking about state capture; we are talking about presidential capture. That man has been taken in some corner where he is told things to do and things to say, where to go, what to do and what not to say. How do you explain that a whole President does not know that his Chief Justice is going to go away? We read in the newspaper, somebody wrote to the Chief Justice and said go away because the President said you do. The Chief Justice said that is not true. How do you explain a whole country to which an entire President does not know that his Chief Justice is going away? We have crisis and typically I am a woman, if I am not getting what I need in the bedroom you will see it in my face and neighbours begin to speak. We should not complain about Malema telling us that things are going wrong, our faces are speaking. Malema is tired, he is like woman who is not getting anything at home, who goes and ask to the neighbour, he gives her and supports her once and twice. The wife begins to say but where is my share I am not getting the stuff you used to give me, you complain. We want to see the Speaker supporting a petition to see the President so we can speak to him.
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