THABO MBEKI: The ANC’s insistence that MPs serve the party is a betrayal of the revolution and the Constitution
The governing party was a key architect of SA’s constitutional democracy and is obliged to protect it, not undermine it
On August 8 2017 our National Assembly convened to consider and vote on a motion of no confidence in the president of the republic, the honourable Jacob Zuma. Following a judgment which had been handed down by our Constitutional Court, the speaker of the National Assembly, honourable Baleka Mbete, had prescribed that the members of the National Assembly, our MPs, would respond to the motion through a secret ballot. It is a matter of public record that this no confidence motion failed. This was because the majority of the members of the National Assembly, our MPs, voting in a secret ballot, effectively confirmed their confidence in the president of our republic. The process in which the National Assembly engaged, resulting in this outcome, represented an admirable manifestation of the health of our democracy. This was so because the facts of the open and transparent debate in the National Assembly, and the subsequent secret ballot, made it possible for the National Assembly to illust...
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