The resignation of Tony Yengeni brings closure to one of the most disgraceful episodes in the history of Parliament. As the ruling party's chief whip, Yengeni once held a respected position of authority and trust. It was a trust which, by his own subsequent admission to a court of law, he betrayed.

He did this first by involving himself, for his own personal aggrandisement, in an unethical and illicit deal which has serious implications for the legitimacy of the government's extravagant arms procurement procedures, and after that by misrepresenting his actions with the conscious intent to defraud Parliament. Whatever judgment the court may now pass on him, it is altogether right and proper that he should no longer be a member of this key democratic institution.

Beyond the personal role of Yengeni, and overshadowing it, is the response of his party to this whole affair. Even as the ANC welcomed his resignation as the right thing to do, senior party spokespeople insisted that his decision was made without pressure from the party. This would seem to accord with events earlier in the week, when Speaker Frene Ginwala's laudable efforts to protect the integrity of the House appeared to be at odds with the prevailing view within the party. And if Yengeni was not pushed, then why not? If fraudulently lying to Parliament is not enough, what more would he have had to do provoke his comrades in the ANC into making a stand?

This is a party that repeatedly declares its commitment to high democratic principle, but again and again its actions betray something else. From the first in this affair (as in others where senior party members have got themselves into difficulties), the ANC closed ranks around its beleagured comrade. Where the situation cried out for an open inquiry, the party brought down the shutters and rounded instead on its critics. If internal pressure was brought to bear at all, it was not Tony Yengeni who was first to feel it, but the principled Andrew Feinstein. There will be disappointment at Yengeni's human fallibility, and gratification that right and justice have prevailed in the end, but it is the ruling party's failure to make a stand on its own declared principles that leaves a sour aftertaste.

And then, despite spokesman Smuts Ngonyama's insistence that Yengeni was not pushed, the rumour is growing that it was, in fact, pressure from party leader Thabo Mbeki that made him jump. If so, why pretend otherwise? Why must the ANC constantly play the smoke and mirrors game? What the nation needs is an unequivocal declaration from its president that government does stand by the principles it espouses. The sooner Mbeki makes it, the better

With acknowledgements to the writer and The Natal Witness.