They are not underpaid by any stretch of the imagination. They're more than adequately rewarded for doing very little, if anything; for enjoying the comforts of their benches, yawning and occasionally nodding off. But the way they're telling it, it's as though they're getting slave wages. Ideological differences and personal animosities have been set aside in their undignified pursuit for more pay.
Ordinarily, in most countries, those who want to make money take the risk of going into business: in SA, we go into politics. It offers easy money, in keeping with our national pastime of demanding lucrative rewards for little or no sweat. I'm of the view that parliament should be located, not in Cape Town, but in some inhospitable part of the country, like the Karoo. Only the truly committed would then aspire to parliament.
MPs will find little public sympathy for their demands. The ordinary guy eking out a living will be astounded to hear that MPs are struggling to make ends meet on a salary of more than half a million rand. It won't make sense. MPs do not intrude into ordinary people's realities. They don't elect them; they don't know them. Imbizos or constituency work are but a charade.
But MPs have also not exactly covered themselves with glory. They have made headlines for the wrong reasons, with some of them showing disrespect for honesty and integrity. A few week ago the Speaker publicly rebuked some MPs for their involvement in the Travelgate scam. How could she? She has no leg to stand on. Her own role in the scam has yet to be cleared or clarified. And didn't she get a driver's licence without going through the rigours of a test?
But there's a far more serious problem confronting parliament, indeed our politics, than the pecuniary concerns of MPs. It is the alienation of the common man from the political process. A decade and a half into what we hoped would be our deliverance, the Promised Land is turning out into something of a mirage for some. Parliament, a potent symbol of our democracy, has become a sideshow, cut off from the people, the voters - who should sustain it - by the structures which created it, and treated with some disdain by those who wield power. This suspense, this rootlessness, feeds into the MPs' insecurity. Parliament is no place for those with an ambition to succeed.
Opposition MPs have no choice but to come to terms with their lot. But in a funny way, it's tougher for ANC MPs. As members of the governing party, they do have potential for growth, but that growth is not possible under current conditions. Floor-crossing and the party's insatiable appetite to devour every little party going, including Nat leftovers, has left few, if any, opportunities for promotion. The queue is simply too long. And, as an incentive, the newcomers or turn coats are lured with promises of jumping up the queue.
President Thabo Mbeki's tendency to leave the responsibilities of reshuffling his cabinet to the will of God does not help matters. Death comes but once in a long while. Without divine intervention, it's jobs for life for cabinet ministers, Euro la Andrei Gromyko. For some ambitious MP contemplating his or her future on the back benches, that's a bleak prospect indeed.
No, the answer is not more money for MPs. It lies in making parliament relevant, nay, central, to the lives of ordinary people. The system should be changed so that every MP is elected by and answerable to the voters. Maybe then someone could even decide they deserve a penny more.
e-mail: fmeditor@fm.co.za
