Undignified Sona charade must come to an end

Another State of the Nation address has passed through the portals of parliament and another shambolic travesty has been visited on the heart of our democracy.

It is time for all of us to stand up and say enough is enough.

Any dignity left in the democratic process was effectively ejected from the House as the EFF was manhandled unceremoniously out of the door. And the fist fights in the parliamentary precinct which followed did precious little but add a sour taste to proceedings that had started under the shadow of imminent violence when President Jacob Zuma had decided beforehand to deploy 441 armed SANDF troops.

READ MORE: Malema ‘not feeling well’ after last night’s mayhem

It truly lit the touchpaper of enraged sentiment in the House. This was not helped by the delays occasioned by the EFF posturing with plastic restraints and claims they would be “injected”. Nor, we might add, by Julius Malema calling the president a “tsotsi”. But surely only the terminally naive would have failed to foresee something like that from the EFF.

Nor were things helped by the DA demands for a minute’s silence for the 94 psychiatric victims left dead through the incompetence of the Gauteng health authorities. The overwhelming feeling remained that this was a self-righteous filibuster from the official opposition.

But throughout, the ruling ANC – and the chocolate fireman who is Speaker of the House Baleka Mbete, who seems instantly to melt when the heat is turned up – were far from blameless. The verbal obscenities caught by the microphone as a rush of burly security personnel charged the EFF benches, from the ranks of the ANC – the most vocal of these from a female Cabinet minister – were far short of either gravitas or dignity, leading to the feeling we are likely to remain a democracy in name only.

The whole charade had a coarse and common feel.

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