House Chairman, I have discharged myself from hospital today, and I come to this podium heavily medicated to plead with my friends and colleagues from the ANC to follow the dictates of their conscience. There is much more at stake in respect of this Bill than the Bill itself. It is the very notion of democracy and what we are doing here.
Many of you know that this is a bad Bill. You have been told by the churches, you have been told by the trade unions, you have been told by the nongovernmental organisations, NGOs, and you have been told by the people of South Africa that this is a bad Bill. [Interjections.] Many of you have told me in the corridors that this is a bad Bill, and yet you will vote for it. This is where the hard-fought democracy perishes. If we do not have the courage to vote by conscience, it is the end of the First Republic, because then we can just as well send one single person from each political party to come in here with a proxy for all the others. When the day comes that they shut our brains and our conscience down, this Parliament will no longer be what the Constitution wanted it to be.