CAPE TOWN: South Africa on Friday took stock of its hard-won democracy, embodied by the late liberation hero Nelson Mandela, a day after chaos erupted in parliament during President Jacob Zuma's State of the Nation address.
Radical lawmakers who interrupted Zuma to demand he "pay back the money" spent on upgrades to his private residence were dragged kicking and fighting out of parliament by a large force of security officials on Thursday night.
"Chaos sign of SA's democratic decline," the respected Business Day newspaper declared in a front-page headline.
"Unthinkable less than five years ago, the disturbing scenes that unfolded in and outside the national assembly last night are cause for SA to pause and reflect on why and how the country has arrived at this point."
The paper pointed to Zuma's presidency as a key factor in the decline.
"SA is in the mess that played out in parliament precisely because it has prioritised acquiescence to executive sensibilities over the critical need to do what is right," Business Day argued.
Zuma who has been hotly heckled by members of the far-left Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party, said the nature of the country's democracy was partly to blame for the mess.
"Our democracy is extraordinarily user-friendly, you can do whatever you want in South Africa, it's a strength, at the same time it's a weakness," the president told a Friday breakfast session in a building nestled at the foot of Cape Town's famous Table Mountain.
Without democracy, the opposition lawmakers would not have behaved the way they did, he said.
EFF founder Julius Malema, formerly youth leader in the ruling African National Congress (ANC) until the party expelled him in 2012, said Friday the country was facing a "crisis".
- 'Democracy in serious danger' -
"It is a sad day that elected representatives can be beaten by police," the firebrand politician said after he and his fellow lawmakers were ejected from parliament.
"All of us should agree that South Africa is in a crisis."
"This has put our democracy in a serious danger," Malema said.
Many commentators pointed to the jamming of mobile phone signals in the national assembly ahead of Zuma's speech -- preventing journalists from filing stories and pictures -- as a clear sign of the government's disregard for freedom of expression.
The clampdown was lifted after protests from media and MPs, which enabled video of the fracas to be shown, though the official parliamentary television feed focused only on the speaker, talking over the sound of scuffles.
"A large part of our democracy died last night; the ANC can never again claim that it is ruling for the benefit of all of us," Stephen Grootes wrote in the analytical Daily Maverick online newspaper, taking issue with the signal jamming.
- 'Disaster and embarrassment' -
"That attempt to control the representatives of the country, for the benefit of one party..., pushed everyone else into rebellion," he wrote.
Malema told reporters that his party, which holds 25 of the 400 seats in the national assembly, would not be cowed.
"This is just the beginning," he said.
"If we get an opportunity to do again what we did yesterday we will repeat it. We don't care. We are not scared of anything."
Zuma, however, appeared to suggest that even stronger tactics should be used in future in parliament.
"They are actually causing chaos," he told the business breakfast broadcast live on national television.
"Clearly to my view this is a time for parliament to stand up and apply the rules more strictly than they do," he said.
The largest opposition the Democratic Alliance's senior lawmaker Mmusi Maimane described the havoc in parliament as a "disaster and national embarrassment".
"...Zuma is no longer fit to be president," of South Africa, said Maimane.
Khaya Dlanga, a columnist with the weekly Mail & Guardian said the parliament pandemonium "was a disgrace to our democracy. Nobody won. We lost as a country."
"We have entered dangerous territory," said Dlanga.
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