Birthday song for Buthelezi

2008-11-01 14:40

Johannesburg - ANC breakaway members at the national convention took a detour from politics on Saturday to sing happy birthday to absent IFP leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi.

Delivering Buthelezi's apologies for not being able to attend the convention in Sandton, IFP stalwart Lionel Mtshali said the party leader was unable to accept because he was celebrating his 80th birthday celebrations.

Soon after the announcement, what began as a small number singing happy birthday, the majority of delegates had risen to their feet and joined in.

In a speech prepared to be delivered at the convention, Buthelezi said South Africa's Constitution had been betrayed and in many respects obliterated.

"Our democracy is ailing. The people of South Africa have been forgotten. Our liberation struggle has been hijacked."

Buthelezi said under the country's Constitution, Parliament ought to be central in the formation of policies, the making of laws and the governing of the country.

"Instead, our Parliament has been bypassed. The President of the country is fired and a new one selected elsewhere and parliament is merely called upon to ratify this decision."

The policies of government were formulated in an unaccountable executive committee comprising people who were not even elected, and were handed down to the departments which then transform them into laws which were in turn handed down to Parliament to adopt.

"In the past 15 years, Parliament adopted hundreds of laws handed down to it without any substantial changes, perhaps with the exception of the legislation which I introduced when I was the minister of home affairs for 10 years," Buthelezi said.

"In a certain sense, we are even worse off now than we were before 1994, as we were then driven by hopes for a better future which now seems to have passed us by."

He said the country was at the point where it could almost be said that South Africa had a great future behind it.

- SAPA