More particularly, Magosi - who are the equivalent of the venerable Members of the Peerage in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland - want to be able to set their own regulations without having to request the permission of a minister. That would be an outstanding achievement because in addition to their predilection for self-aggrandisement, ministers are hamstrung by the party-political interests which they see nothing wrong with advancing ahead of the public interest. In fact, even when occasionally troubled by conscience and compulsion of the truth, our ministers always eventually prefer running with the parochial party line and misleading the public because they apparently have as much backbone as may be found in filleted fish.
We can almost understand why our Magosi have always complained that they were not being given the recognition they deserve when they were just 'silent legislators' waiting to be fed with content by ministers for rubber-stamping. These are men and women who spend taxpayer's money on benchmarking missions abroad without a matching improvement in their contribution to enacting laws or drafting policy. In fact, although this chamber is purportedly the Upper House of the National Assembly, the government - and we refer specifically to the cabinet here - has little regard for it and can pass bills into law which this chamber has rejected. The amended Public Service Act of 2011 is an example of this contempt. Magosi are demanding autonomy at a time when Parliament is also fighting to establish its independence. Members of Parliament are doing this at the same time as they have been insisting on their important oversight role by investigating and exposing corruption in what is purportedly Africa's most prudently managed economy. In the process, several ministers have found themselves stripped of their veneer of respectability, their patina of success exposed as the result from robbery.
