DreamKing
Honorary Master
http://www.da.org.za/newsroom.htm?action=view-news-item&id=8557
what an uneducated answer .......
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Athol Trollip, Parliamentary Leader of the Democratic Alliance
10 August 2010
The drive to centralise power in the ANC-controlled national government, a trend begun by South Africa’s erstwhile president Thabo Mbeki, has accelerated since President Jacob Zuma took office. The thought of losing power in an open democracy is unacceptable to the ANC. Furthermore, its baseless sense of entitlement to the South African polity and the governance thereof can brook no threats, even from an independent and inquiring media, hence the ANC’s proposal to control the free flow of information and establish an authoritarian media tribunal, both of which are inconsistent with our basic freedoms.
These are only some of the features of a long drive to centralise all power in the ANC, a reflection of a party uncomfortable with the idea of open, democratic competition and the principles of accountability and transparency.
Centralisation is the result of two mutually reinforcing processes: cadre deployment and a host of new legislative and policy proposals that seek to centralise power and place even greater powers of surveillance and control under the authority of the national government. The eighteen key pieces of proposed legislation and policy are outlined in the document released by the DA today.
In addition to extending the ANC’s reach into nearly all spheres of public life, these initiatives undermine the letter and spirit of the Constitution; they reduce federalism, erode the separation of powers and weaken democracy by removing critical checks and balances and replacing accountability to people with accountability to Luthuli House.
The centralisation of power by the ANC through legislation and policy changes constitutes a multi-faceted strategy on the part of the ruling party to entrench its power, clamp down on dissent and ensure that its leaders can gain access to state funds unfettered by proper oversight or criticised by a free media.
It represents the formal manifestation of the ‘closed crony society’, the mantra of the current ANC administration that seeks to concentrate access to jobs and tenders in the hands of a small, elite cabal of ANC leaders. In the closed crony society, every facet of life, from what you read in the newspapers to your choice of healthcare provider to who you choose to represent you at provincial and local government level, is determined by the priorities and prejudices of the ruling ANC elite.
The mechanism by which the ANC plans to implement this vision is the centralisation of power. Four of the eighteen most significant examples of centralising legislation and policy mentioned in the accompanying document are outlined in brief below.
Recent Examples of Centralising Initiatives and Legislative Proposals
Protection of Information Bill: would centralise significant powers of censorship with the Minister and the National Intelligence Agency. This would almost certainly be abused by the ANC given its record of cover-ups and well-recorded hostility to the free media. Since the Bill would also protect from public scrutiny ‘details of criminal investigations’, cases involving corruption could be protected from media exposure. If the Bill had been in place at the time, the general public may never have found out about the Arms Deal.
State Security Bill: would centralise all state security and intelligence agencies and institutions and place them under the authority of the Minister. This would grant the ruling party unprecedented powers of coercion and surveillance, something that it will almost certainly abuse to protect its leaders, entrench its power and silence its critics. The Bill is reminiscent of the apartheid-era Bureau of State Security (BOSS) and as such is an affront to democracy and is an insult to the hard-won civil liberties of South African citizens.
Proposal to scrap the provinces: as reflected in recently released ANC discussion documents, this would nullify the federal aspects of our democratic dispensation as agreed to at the negotiated settlement in 1994 and place all power in the national government of a highly centralised, unitary state. This means that citizens in different parts of the country will not be able to opt for an alternative party to represent them at provincial level. By entrenching the power of the ruling party even further, scrapping the provinces would remove a key constitutional safeguard against abuses of power by the national government.
Public Administration Management Bill: proposes to create a single public service and give the Minister of Public Service and Administration the power to intervene directly in the affairs of municipal councils, even retroactively. Since these centrally-appointed Heads of Department (HODs) would owe their careers to the ANC leadership and not the citizens they serve, the Bill would reduce transparency and accountability in the Public Service and undermine the DA’s goal of offering South Africans a real alternative to the closed cronyism of the ANC.
An attack on our Constitution
These eighteen legislative and policy proposals present a multi-faceted attack on the Constitution, its founding principles and democracy itself. These measures have the potential to contravene at least seven constitutional provisions - provisions that are meant to protect our fundamental freedoms, prevent abuses of power, maintain the integrity of the criminal justice system and the courts and ensure that our public civil service is run professionally and without interference from party political agendas. These are outlined below.
Freedom of expression: faces direct attacks from the Public Service Broadcasting Bill and the Protection of Information Bill.
The property clause: will be significantly undermined by the Land Expropriation Bill which grants the state greater powers to expropriate land without compensating the landowner at an acceptable market value.
Powers of local and provincial government: will be undermined by at least five proposals including the 17th Constitutional Amendment Bill, the proposal to scrap the provinces, the National Treasury Constitutional Amendment Bill, the Division of Revenue Bill and the National Planning Commission.
The role of local government: will be severely curtailed by both the 17th Constitutional Amendment Bill and the National Treasury Constitutional Amendment Bill.
The independence of the judiciary: will be significantly reduced via the Judicial Conduct Tribunals Bill, the South African National Justice College Draft Bill and proposed amendments to the Judicial Service Commission Act.
The impartiality of the National Prosecuting Authority: is being eroded through the politicisation of the NPA and, more recently, the appointment of the controversial Menzi Simelane as its head, a recognised ally of the ruling party.
There is no doubt that the centralisation of power by the ANC is a systematic attempt to entrench its power and ensure that its particular brand of nationalism dominates every sphere of South African life. It is no surprise that this drive to centralise has gained momentum ever since the DA began to win elections, first in the City of Cape Town and then in the Western Cape.
What we, the DA can do
There are a number of steps that can be taken to resist these attacks to our constitutional dispensation. First, the DA will use its role as the official opposition in Parliament, by drawing attention to the detrimental consequences of these proposals in public forums.
Second, in the case of constitutional amendments brought before the National Assembly, the DA will do all it can to lobby other opposition parties to vote no, when a proposal would centralise power to the detriment of our democracy. Constitutional amendments require a two-thirds majority, something the ANC does not have.
Third, where legislative proposals are inconsistent with constitutional provisions the DA can challenge their constitutionality in court. This has proved successful with other abuses by the ANC, as illustrated by the favourable judgment in the Erasmus Commission case. The centralisation of power by the ANC represents a genuine threat to our constitutional order and the DA will use those means available to us within the framework of our constitutional state to resist its progress.
Conclusion
The ANC’s drive to centralise power in the national government continues apace. Despite encouraging signs that some quarters of the ANC oppose the policy of cadre deployment, as evidenced by the proposal before the NGC next month that would seek to prevent ANC office-holders occupying management positions in municipalities, this move should not distract us from the wider machinations at work that seek to centre all power within the ANC government. Among others, these include plans to scrap the provinces and to centralise all facets of the public service into one bureaucracy answerable to the Minister of Public Service and Administration. These moves represent threats to key tents of our Constitution, and need to be understood as the paranoiac reaction of a power-hungry party incensed by its significant election losses to the Democratic Alliance (DA), first in Cape Town and then in the Western Cape
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