By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The state of the nation address proceedings were suspended on Thursday for 10 minutes by national assembly speaker Nosiviwe Mapisa Nqakula after the EFF disrupted president Cyril Ramaphosa and had violent clashes with the security.
As the president took to the podium, EFF leader Julius Malema stood on a point of order and asked Mapisa-Nqakula to ask the president to sit down.
He asked Mapisa-Nqakula to close the meeting because Ramaphosa had taken parliament to court. The president is challenging the report against him by parliament’s Section 89 panel on Phala Phala.
“We have a matter with him before court. So let’s wait for the court to rule on that matter and then we can proceed with the meeting,” argued Malema.
“There’s nothing stopping the president from addressing parliament,” responded Mapisa-Nqakula.
Mapisa-Nqakula also asked ATM president Vuyo Zungula to leave the house after joining in the EFF’s point of order.
After refusing to leave, the NA speaker asked for the parliamentary security to remove him.
“Honourable Zungula quoted the wrong rule,” she said.
The party intensified its calls for Ramaphosa to step down late last year following the publication of the Section 89 panel, which found that the president may have a case to answer on the burglary at his Phala Phala farm in Limpopo in February 2020.
DA leader John Steenhuisen said it is important that security services were already in the House before she called them and they had firearms.
In response, Mapisa-Nqakula said EFF MPs “were not invited to climb the stage where the president was sitting”.
“Rules or no rules”, she said, because climbing the stage immediately threatens the “principal”.
Furthermore, she said they would have to go back to the Hansard and the recordings.
Freedom Front Plus MP Pieter Groenewald said Ramaphosa’s life had been threatened and the security forces had acted upon that.
Ramaphosa’s office has hinted that he will address the electricity crisis as Eskom continues to implement rolling blackouts.
This comes as political parties, civil society, unions and other stakeholders urged Ramaphosa to deal with socio-economic challenges facing the country.