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You are not GOD! Shivambu tells Mbete

 

Sibusiso Banda

Economic Freedom Fighter’s Chief Whip Floyd Shivambu has told Parliament Speaker Baleka Mbete that she is not “God!”

The comment came immediately after Mbete gave a stern warning to EFF MPs when she opened Tuesday's sitting by addressing the chaos that erupted almost two weeks ago when EFF MP's demanded that President Jacob Zuma pay back money for Nkandla. This led to cancellation of parliamentary proceedings for that day.

"As members will remember, the refusal of the members of the EFF to abide by the directions and rulings of the chair led to the early adjournment of proceedings and the question session was not completed."

"At the time, I opted for a lessor sanction which was to order the members to leave the House.

"I cannot but strongly condemn the disruption of the proceedings in the chamber," she said after confirming that she would not call on the House to suspend the EFF MPs from parliament.

Mbete said she will leave the matter to Parliament's powers and privileges committee to investigate further.

Despite being told they are off the hook for now, as soon as Mbete completed her statement, Shivambu rose to object, ignoring Mbete’s protestations that she had not intended to open the matter for debate.

“How is the committee going to investigate when you are making conclusive remarks in this house?” he asked.

Sports Committee wants FIFA to brief on match-fixing saga

Sibusiso Banda

Parliament’s Committee on Sports is looking at the prospects of requesting the international soccer body FIFA to come and brief them on the progress of their match fixing investigation in which South Africa was implicated. 

This follows Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula briefed the committee regarding the update on the investigation. The committee heard that government is still waiting too on FIFA to give then direction as to how far they are with regards to their investigation in to match fixing.

FIFA’s investigation trails back to two years ago when South Africa was implicated in a global match fixing scandal related to Bafana Bafana World Cup warm-up games. Mbalula stated that there was also no time frame indicating as to when the investigation will conclude.

 “I won’t lie before the committee and say I did get some brief from FIFA and say there are time frames. There are none. It’s an open-ended process.”

The minister told the committee that the matter is entirely on the global football organization’s hands and there is nothing that government can do to speed up the process as it would constitute to government interference.

A coldwar of hashtags brewing in South African politics

 Sibusiso Banda

Hashtag that!! That’s the new trend that has hit the South African political sphere. In light of the breaking stories this past week, the country’s top three political parties resorted to sharing their views with their followers on social media particularly on Twitter by creating a Game of Thrones via  spearheaded by hashtags message.

Just to bring you up to speed: Hashtags, words or phrases preceded by the # symbol, have been popularized on Twitter as a way for users to organize and search messages. For instance, people tweeting about the ruling party might add the hashtag #ANC to their message, and those searching for the lastests developments in parliament could simply search #ParlyChaos.

South Africa’s relations with Israel will remain

Sibusiso Banda

Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa has reiterated South Africa will not be considering suspending its diplomatic relations with Israel despite local pressure to do so

Ramaphosa, answering questions in the National Council of Provinces, told MPs "maintaining diplomatic relations with Israel allows our country to continue to engage with Israel on issues of mutual interest, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

"The government of South Africa has communicated its unequivocal and strongest condemnation of Israeli against Palestinians in Gaza to the government of the state of Israel, and we have done this through a number of measures.” he said.

The Deputy President said the country will lose Top of Formits leverage to mediate in the Middle East if it heeds to calls to cut ties. He explained that the ties enabled President Jacob Zuma to deploy two special envoys, led by former minister Zola Skweyiya and deputy minister Aziz Pahad, to the Middle East for talks with both sides to the Israel-Hamas conflict.