By Own Correspondent| Temba Mliswa who is independent legislator for Norton yesterday torched a storm in parliament after suggesting that the number of seats allocated to women under the proportional representation (PR) quota should be reduced to include war veterans and people living with disability.
Mliswa called for the reduction of the seats arguing that most of the women in parliament had not participated meaningfully in the august house.
He said some of the women’s PR seats should be allocated to war veterans and disabled people.
Below is Mliswa’s submission.
“The issue of the elections in this country is very important and I want to touch on this in terms of the war veterans.
This will also touch those living with disability, why can this country not have a quota for them because we have a quota for women, 60 women are in Parliament.
“Most of them do not do anything, the only thing that we have seen coming off them is having nice makeup and nice wigs so the proportional representation of 60 women Members of Parliament has actually made us lose money because if you now take stock of what they have done, most of them have done nothing…it is my suggestion that out of the 66, 20 of them go to war veterans, 20 go to people with disability because if you see contributions in the Hansard which is a record of Parliament, they have absolutely said nothing. Some of them have even lost primary elections without even saying nothing.”
Female legislators however came out guns blazing against Mliswa’s submission to parliament reminding him that the proportional representation was a Constitutional provision which should be adhered to.
MDC-T’s Thabitha Khumalo had to be escorted outside by the Sergeant-at-Arms after she became angry and continued interjecting Mliswa ‘s submissions.
“…you were given birth to by a woman, Mr Speaker. You must respect women,” said Khumalo.