Now Zuma is tossing the speaker to the wolves - Is the president losing his mental faculties?

There is a certain irony in President Jacob Zuma asking the speaker of the National Assembly to get her House in order.

After all, most of the chaos in parliament in the past two years has been related to the many controversies to which he himself has been the central figure.

Zuma made his comments last Thursday in his reply to the presidential budget debate, a session which was boycotted by the majority of the opposition MPs.

This followed his budget speech on Wednesday when EFF MPs were forcibly evicted after trying to stop him from addressing the House.

They had suggested that Zuma was no longer worthy of respect because of the court ruling finding that the National Prosecuting Authority had erred in dropping 783 corruption charges against him in 2009.

Zuma complained on Thursday that the speaker, Baleka Mbete, could have done "more to bring this House into order". He said members could not expect respect if they did not respect others.

In off-the-cuff comments, he said that people around Africa were asking him "very embarrassing questions about this parliament".

He said what was happening in parliament was changing perceptions of South Africa as a strong constitutional democracy.

"They are now saying you are influencing some of their people in a wrong way. It will be very important that you seriously bring this House into some order for the dignity of the country."

Mbete, to her credit, responded in a dignified manner to what was an unwarranted attack on her character. She agreed that people were asking questions and said that the rules committee was dealing with this matter.

She had previously declined a written request by the EFF that Zuma should not be allowed to address the House.

The first serious disruption in the house, on August 21 2014, was directly linked to members of the opposition insisting that he should "pay back the money", in reference to the millions spent on the upgrade of his Nkandla homestead and for which he had been ordered to make a contribution by the public protector.

It was clear that the disruptions had caught the speaker and the House by surprise.

Since then, most of the disruptions have resulted in the forceful removal of EFF members from the National Assembly. Sometimes members of other opposition parties have walked out in protest over one issue or another.

All the disruptions have been linked to Nkandla and, more recently, to the ruling by the Constitutional Court supporting the report by the public protector and the recent court ruling that the National Prosecuting Authority had erred in withdrawing more than 700 charges against Zuma.

In February 2016, the president struggled to deliver the state of the nation address as EFF members chanted "Zuma Must Fall" until they were eventually escorted out of the House.

Much has been made of the dual roles that Mbete occupies, as speaker of the National Assembly and as national chairperson of the ruling ANC.

However, until the disruptions, which now appear to target her too, she had done a reasonable and sometimes commendable job of controlling the upper house of parliament.

This is, after all, not the first time she has done the job. She occupied the post for several years before she served as deputy president to Kgalema Motlanthe in 2008 after the ANC recalled Thabo Mbeki.

But Mbete's task became difficult in the current parliament which, for the first time, has 25 members of the EFF as parliamentarians. The new kid on the block has brought a combative and disruptive element to parliamentary politics.

The EFF has made it its mission to target Zuma and to embarrass him at every opportunity, including every time he tries to address parliament. More recently they appeared to have added the speaker to their "hit list".

The role of the presiding officers in parliament - including the speaker, the chairperson of the National Council of Provinces and their deputies - is to ensure that things run smoothly, including allowing an opportunity for members and the president, who has a constitutional obligation to address and account to parliament, to do so without disruption.

Mbete's "protection" of the president, in this context, should be seen as protecting a guest in her house, irrespective of his position.

That he happens to be the leader of her party and that she is one of the top six office bearers of the governing party complicates things, but is not the major factor driving her actions. Her actions are in line with her job of restoring some dignity to parliament.

It is interesting that the president chose to publicly rebuke her when he could simply have raised the matter at one of their regular meetings as an issue of concern.

Mbete is not entirely to blame for what is happening in parliament. In fact, one could argue that what has transpired would have happened irrespective of who the speaker was.

One could also consider this sobering point. We don't know what the speaker thinks of the president.

We don't know what she says in the comfort of her living room about some of the challenges that have made some of us defend him and some rebuke him with contempt.

The reason we don't know this is because, as a seasoned cadre of the ANC, the office the man occupies is what must be respected and held in high stature.

This president has come and will go but the office remains. I think the same rings true of Mbete's responsibility as speaker. The dignity and the esteem of the office that Zuma occupies is and should be her concern. If that weren't the case she would be found to be lacking as a speaker.

The main factor is the reluctance of the president to take ownership of problems and to offer solutions. He has failed to do so on Nkandla. He hasn't done so on the corruption charges and he has also shirked responsibility for his part in the chaos in parliament.

Real leaders offer solutions and the president has once again missed a wonderful opportunity to lead.

Sindisa Mondlo is a community developer and political science researcher