Speaker, the biggest commitment, both nationally and internationally, to democracy and human rights that we have made as a country is agreeing to and passing into law the Constitution in 1996. At that stage we committed ourselves to upholding a democratic system of government, and our Constitution was lauded all over the world as being one of the most liberal in the area of human rights.
Today we need to look at the progress we have made in upholding that commitment. I am afraid that there are alarm bells ringing louder and louder which indicates that the significant achievement of bringing about democratic government in our country is under threat.
Firstly, in a democratic government the goal is to open up windows of opportunity for everyone. However, we have succeeded in opening the gates of opportunism for some only - think of Travelgate, Oilgate and Armsgate, to name but a few.
Secondly, undisputed essentials of a democracy are freedom of speech and expression and a free press. Recent events have shown that the current government has de facto rewritten section 16 of the Bill of Rights to read as follows: Everyone has the right to freedom of expression, except if you happen to make gestures at the President that his blue light brigade regards as inappropriate, or if you happen to expose alleged underhand dealings of the National Police Commissioner. At the same time the right to privacy, and not to have one's home searched and the privacy of one's communications infringed, must also give way in the above circumstances.
Freedom of the media enshrined in section 16(1)(a) of the Bill of Rights is regarded as an unnecessary evil when it is used to expose the myriad examples of corruption, lack of service delivery and grossly wasteful expenditure of so many in our government. Of course, it is very difficult to tell exactly what our President really feels about the matter, as his statements differ depending on his audience.
In this very House, last week, the President tried to justify the ANC's insistence that media censorship is necessary and that the law of defamation is not sufficient to protect the poor people in this country who cannot afford to take the media to court. Then at a meeting with media representatives last Friday, he said that the government is committed to a free press as enshrined in our Constitution, but that we need to guard against "foreign spies". In Monday's newspapers we see that the ANC is concerned that whistleblowers are undermining them. We can understand the President's paranoia regarding spies, given what is going on in his own party, but we would love the President to give us examples of these countless poor people who are defamed and need this drastic government intervention.
Mr Speaker, we are not fooled. The media tribunal is to protect the ANC and its cronies, and no-one else. [Laughter.] And here's a novel thought: If the ANC conducted itself in a way that was beyond reproach, there would be nothing to expose, now would there?
Thirdly, other essential pillars of democratic government are the independence of the judiciary and the separation of powers. When a political party has to take court action resulting from a judge conducting a political witch-hunt at the behest of the most senior member of a provincial executive, then we are treading on dangerous ground - even more so when that member of the executive is held in such high esteem by the ruling party that he now represents our country as an ambassador in one of the most influential countries of the world.
When a premier has to go to court to enforce her constitutional right to be part of a committee discussing the alleged interference of a High Court judge in a Constitutional Court case, we are quite justified in assuming that the said commission is taking into account considerations that are not based on judicial principles. And this is the very commission that is supposed to be choosing independent judges!
Of course, the fact that the premier won both court actions is a positive sign that there are still judges who are independent, but it appears that they are becoming fewer and fewer.
A vital part of an independent judicial system is the impartiality of the National Director of Public Prosecutions and its ability to exercise its constitutional mandate without fear, favour or prejudice. The ousting of Vusi Pikoli as the National Director of Public Prosecutions, NDPP, in favour of a man who has proven himself unfit in every respect other than having the distinguished qualification of being a supporter of Jacob Zuma, goes to show just how far the President will go to protect himself and his cronies from criminal charges, and the disdain with which he regards our democracy when it does not suit his purposes.
Fourthly, the ongoing assault on property rights enshrined in the Constitution is causing untold damage to our democracy, not to mention our economy, and the more uncertainty there is, the less productivity and the less external investment we shall see. It is a lose-lose situation.
So, Mr Speaker, at the moment we are unfortunately in serious danger of losing all the ground we have gained since the advent of democracy. It is the responsibility of each one of us to stand up for the democratic principles for which so many fought for so long and which can so quickly be destroyed by the short-sighted actions of people whose own interests are their only priority. If we do not do this, we will not have a future worth thinking about. [Applause.]