House Chairperson, there is a time to come and there is a time to go. Sadly, the Secretary to Parliament's time to go was three years ago. The Secretary to Parliament is like the CEO of this organisation and the fact that this has been dragging on for almost three years has led to a lost of direction and strategic focus for the organisation, as uncertainty and instability around this important position has lingered.
Parliament has a duty to hold itself and its office- bearers to a higher standard, particularly because this House is charged with holding the executive and organs of state accountable to it. That means that there is a higher duty to hold ourselves to a higher standard.
We can't do this credibly if we don't take appropriate action timeously against office-bearers of this Parliament in an effective way. Oversight and accountability cannot be nice words that we put on the steps coming into the House, if we are not prepared to practice them in everything we do.
There is a quote that says: "It is never too late to do the right thing." As this House, this is the right thing for us to be doing. Where I do think the new Speaker and the new executive authority need to be commended and congratulated and supported, by us voting for this today is that it would have been very easy for this House just to let Mr Mgidlana's contract come to an end, as it does in November this year, and to quietly let him slink off to another government sinecure in a cushy office somewhere.
However, the Speaker and executive authority and Parliament are sending a very clear message out that we are not going to allow Mr Mgidlana, given the serious gravity of the charges that he has been found guilty of, to slip off into the night into another cushy job, and
that he is going to be dismissed by Parliament, as a result of his action.
What this does is that it sends out the right message throughout the organisation that if you do wrong, you will be held accountable. So, while it has taken a long time to get to where we are today, and to this motion serving before us, it is the right motion and it is the right thing to do.
Hopefully, this organisation can close this chapter and start to heal itself and start to move forward to build a better Parliament of which we, as members, can all be proud, but most importantly, of which the people of South Africa can be proud.