Cape Town - The Phala Phala scandal came back to haunt President Cyril Ramaphosa when he delivered his seventh State of the Nation Address (Sona) on Thursday night.
This after the EFF objected to the joint sitting of Parliament to listen to his address, because he took the national legislature to court.
Ramaphosa has taken a report of the Section 89 panel, which found that he has a case to answer, on judicial review in the Constitutional Court.
It took 45 minutes for Ramaphosa to have an opportunity to address the nation following many points of order and heckling from his new-found nemesis, the EFF .
Ramaphosa had just sipped from a glass of water at 7pm when EFF leader Julius Malema rose on a point of order.
Malema said the MPs could not be addressed by Ramaphosa who had taken Parliament to court over the Phala Phala scandal. “He has passed a motion of no confidence in his Parliament. Until he has resolved the dispute between us and him, he has no leg to address,” he said.
“The right thing to do, is we should allow the court to make a ruling,” Malema added.
National Assembly Speaker Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula ruled that Malema was raising a matter that was not up for discussion.
However, Malema insisted that the rules of Parliament envisaged that there might be necessity to raise issues that were damaging to the image of the institution.
After ruling on Malema, EFF deputy leader Floyd Shivambu stood up to raise his point of order, saying Ramaphosa still had to answer questions from Sars.
When ATM leader Vuyo Zungula rose on his own point of order, he became the first to be ordered to leave the House when he did not follow instructions from Mapisa-Nqakula.
Soon after Zungula was ejected, Mapisa-Nqakula allowed Ramaphosa to proceed with his address at about 7.13pm.
But this did not stop EFF MP Veronica Mente from raising her point of order. She spoke about gender-based violence at Ramaphosa’s Phala Phala farm.
Another EFF MP, Marshall Dlamini, was stopped in his tracks when he raised a point of order referring to Ramaphosa as a criminal.
“This is a president of the republic of South Africa,” Mapisa-Nqakula said before warning Dlamini that he would be ejected from the House.
When Ramaphosa had another opportunity to address the House, he was heckled by EFF members, a move that prompted Mapisa-Nqakula to call out names of several MPs and ordering them to leave.
“If you don’t want to be part of this session and don’t want to listen to Sona, please, you may simply walk out and wait outside,” Mapisa-Nqakula said.
When the EFF MPs initially refused to leave, Mapisa-Nqakula suspended proceedings for 10 minutes and ordered the parliamentary protection services and security agencies to evict them.
In a statement last night, the EFF said it would take Mapisa-Nqakula to court for violating the rights of MPs and mistreating them as a group instead of individuals who had a right to speak in accordance with the rules.
“South Africa has entered a phase where democracy is a thing of the past, and the democratic institution of Parliament which is constituted by duly elected members through election has been defied and violated today.
The votes of our people have been disrespected and trampled upon, by the boots of thugs, police and military men and our democracy sits at the altar of a sadistic puppet of imperialism called Cyril Ramaphosa.”
Cape Times