The National Assembly on Thursday approved a list of 12 non-executive members of the SABC board after a noisy debate in which the opposition accused the majority party of politicising the board, and ensuring that in future the broadcaster will dance to the tune of Luthuli House.

Patricia de Lille, the leader of the Independent Democrats, told the house that the opposition had been deceived. "We were told it would be an inclusive process," she said, "but the only people who were included were the ANC, the SACP and Cosatu."

She said her party would abstain from voting on the list of names. In the end she was joined by the Democratic Alliance, the Congress of the People, the African Christian Democratic Party and the Freedom Front Plus also abstained. Even that usually reliable poodle of the ruling party, the Minority Front, abstained. But the Inkatha Freedom Party did not ? perhaps because the former communications spokesperson for the party, Suzanne Vos, was one of the twelve.

The complaint that the ruling party got all their political nominees elected to the board, but that the opposition did not, allowed the former deputy minister Johnny de Lange to give a new member from the Freedom Front making his maiden speech a lesson in politics. "In democracies throughout the world the majority parties get their way," he said. "Why is it that when the ruling party get its nominees appointed, that is called politicising the board, but when the opposition does so it is not?"

De Lange then went off on a riotous speech in which he gleefully accused the opposition of having has too much to drink at lunchtime. He slapped down the leader of the opposition Athol Trollip, by saying that his MPs were not intelligent. They were just over-excited by alcohol.

Another ANC MP, Sikhumbuzo Kholwane, said the DA should be pleased because for the first time in the history of the board five of its members will be white. He was sternly rebuked by Lindiwe Mazibuko from the DA, who said that obsession with race was not a characteristic of her party. It was the ANC who was obsessed with race.