MAYIBONGWE MAQHINA
THE DA has written to National Assembly Speaker Thandi Modise asking that the constituency period that is set to end on August 16 be cut short in order for the MPs to return to the national legislature to be seen working towards finding solutions and quelling the violent protests.
In a letter to Modise, DA chief whip Natasha Mazzone asked that Parliament reconvene immediately as a matter of urgency in the wake of the violent protests in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng.
“Our country is in a state of absolute turmoil and our people are rightly terrified. We know that we have already lost billions of rand in infrastructure and goods,” she wrote in her letter.
“People are losing their lives. We have a food shortage problem and supply chain emergency – all of this while still fighting a Covid pandemic,” Mazzone said.
“We need to be working in the people’s Parliament and the people of South Africa need to see their leaders working to fix the country,” she added in her letter dated July 13.
In a statement, Mazzone said the country needed to see its public representatives work together to stabilise the situation and quell the destruction to people’s lives and livelihoods.
“South Africans have witnessed the wave of carnage on every imaginable platform and while people lost their lives and businesses were stripped bare and burnt down, the ANC government has been missing in action,” she said.
She said Parliament needed to reconvene urgently so that the agriculture, police, state security, transport, and trade and industry portfolios committee could meet to find and implement viable solutions to ensure that the country did not descend into further anarchy.
“If ever there was a time for leaders to come together for the good of our people, it is now. South Africa cannot afford a third pandemic after the devastation of Covid-19 and corruption has left on our people and economy,” she said.
Speaking via the party’s online The Inside Track earlier, Mazzone said it did not matter what province people lived in.
“We want to see MPs in the National Assembly having discussions and coming up with solutions in public terrain. We don’t want them done behind closed doors,” she said.
On Wednesday, President Cyril Ramaphosa was meeting political parties to discuss the crisis in the country as part of engagements with key sectors of society.