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Each year since the dawn of democracy in April 1994, 24 September has been a public holiday known as ‘Heritage Day’. The idea is to spend time off from the trials and tribulations of working life to celebrate South Africa’s diverse cultural heritage. This is especially given the often-overlooked contribution made by all its people towards creating a ‘rainbow nation’.
On 24 September during the apartheid years, some communities in what’s now KwaZulu-Natal celebrated King Shaka Zulu’s life – or his demise, depending on their preferred historical perspective, of course. Then known as Shaka Day, the date was originally left off a list of public holidays for ‘the new South Africa’ in draft legislation hastily revised when the Inkatha Freedom Party made a parliamentary fuss. The compromise eventually reached was a national holiday with a different name (South African History Online).
By the way, ‘the new South Africa’ is a term possibly coined by the late Guy Arnold, a British writer who used it for the title of his book on South Africa’s political transition (Wikipedia) – and the link to South African History Online (a people’s history) may not always work, being intermittently offline. But we digress ...
This year, Heritage Day fell on a Tuesday. Which is why so many people of working age in formal employment made a long weekend of it and took Monday off – to chill out with an estimated 33.9% of people between the ages of 19 and 64 who live in South Africa and are jobless (StatsSA). We hope to share a few thoughts on the plight of our country’s unemployed and unemployable when the national minimum wage for 2025/26 is announced. But for the time being, with some exceptions, the hourly rate now stands at R27.58 (USD1.59, EUR1.33 and GBP 1.19). How anyone survives on that beggars belief ...
But back to rainbows and culture.
Despite Monday not being an official holiday, the already snail’s pace at which the ‘government of national unity’ (GNU) has been moving ever since its inception slowed to a virtual standstill as public servants and MPs took full advantage of yet another short working week. There have been three since election day on 29 May (which was declared a public holiday and fell on a Wednesday): one in June (Youth Day on 16 June, having fallen on a Thursday), one in August (Women’s Day on 9 August, having fallen on a Friday) and one in September (Heritage Day on 24 September, having fallen on a Tuesday).
Before the elections there were four short weeks: January (New Year’s Day, having fallen on a Monday), March (Human Rights Day on 21 March, having fallen on a Thursday), Good Friday (29 March, marking the beginning of the long Easter weekend and having fallen somewhat predictably on a Friday) and April (Family Day on 1 April, having fallen on a Monday).
So, when we shared these thoughts, only two months in 2024 had been short-week-free – with October and November expected to follow suit, there being no more public holidays until 16 December (Reconciliation Day, which will fall on a Monday) followed by Christmas Day and the Day of Goodwill (25 and 26 December, falling on a Wednesday and Thursday).
Not that we begrudge working people the occasional extra day of rest! Far from it! We work at least 60 hours a week ourselves to keep readers up to speed – although under South Africa’s GNU there hasn’t been much happening. Which is probably because its participants are still feeling their way. President Cyril Ramaphosa has been quoted as having acknowledged that ‘differences of view in the executive’ are to be expected in a relationship between members of political parties with often-opposing manifestos and ideologies (Mail & Guardian). But “what unites us is the statement of intent”, Ramaphosa reportedly told provincial representatives in the NCOP during a question-and-answer session – adding that it had “laid the foundation for forging consensus”.
Our gripe is about the prevailing institutional culture in Parliament, where the elected representatives of ordinary South Africans have spent most of their time this year elsewhere, ostensibly attending to ‘constituency work’.
Parliament’s engine rooms are the National Assembly committees, which only began meeting this year towards the end of February after the official opening of Parliament and State of the Nation Address. This followed a generous festive season break beginning on 12 December 2023. Traditionally, the first week of this annual parliamentary recess is spent attending to ‘constituency work’, although how seriously that’s taken is anybody’s guess.
This year – after a flurry of activity as myriad Bills were finalised and passed at the eleventh hour – the National Assembly committees disbanded when the House rose on 28 March in anticipation of a prolonged pre-elections constituency period. Admittedly, the members of several were re-called to endorse changes to some Bills proposed by the NCOP during the final leg of parliamentary processing. But the representatives of ordinary South Africans elected on 29 May only began their parliamentary work in earnest during August, following the usual orientation programme for new MPs.
All well and good. After all, ropes do need to be learned. Yet astonishingly, our new mostly wet-behind-the-ears political representatives in Parliament are now attending to ‘constituency work’ for the second time since their election – the first three-week constituency period for MPs in South Africa’s seventh democratic post-apartheid Parliament having begun on 29 July (National Assembly programme,16 July 2024).
And for being mostly out-of-office and unmonitored, a backbencher now earns R1.27m (The Citizen).
Of course, those of us who monitor Parliament for our sins are familiar with all that. But how many other South Africans are aware of it? And secretly, even the most cynical among us were probably expecting a change for the better in parliamentary work culture under a GNU. After all, some of its ministerial appointees and committee chairs are notorious sticklers for attributes generally associated with the Protestant work ethic.
Alas, from where we sit the only tangibly positive change worth noting has been that end-of-the-working-week National Government and National Regulation Gazettes are being published before close of business on whatever day happens to be the one before the official beginning of a long or normal weekend. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, they were available online at 08:00 on the dot without fail. But we’re getting there ... So, kudos to Leon Schreiber – GNU Home Affairs Minister and Democratic Alliance (DA) member! Begging the question, “Does he stand out simply for doing his job, and if so, what does that say about ministerial work culture and work ethics across the broader public service?”
Volumes ... HAPPY HERITAGE DAY 2024 nonetheless! And, for good measure, here’s an example of cultural diversity in music and dance performed in October 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic (hence the face masks).
Footnote: political parties represented in Parliament’s National Assembly
*GNU member parties are the African National Congress (ANC), the Democratic Alliance (DA), the Patriotic Alliance (PA), the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), Good, the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC), the Freedom Front Plus (FF Plus), the United Democratic Movement (UDM), Al Jama-ah, Rise Mzansi and the United Africans Transformation (UAT).
*The EFF is one of several political parties represented in Parliament outside the GNU. The others are: uMkhonto weSizwe (MK), ActionSA, the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP), Build One South Africa (BOSA), the African Transformation Movement (ATM) and the National Coloured Congress (NCC).
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