Once upon a time at Parliament

Pics top to bottom: ANC president Jabcob Zuma and next to him is Tokyo Sexwale, dancing ladies, President Thabo Mbeki and you can guess the rest. Click on a photo for more pics.

Hello, today I'm going to co-write my blog with Maya (Cape Town housemate). We have just got back from one of the biggest days in the South African political calendar: the opening of parliament and the president's state of the nation address. We are going to try writing alternate sentences/paragraphs; it should be a great distraction from Maya's job as "person-behind-the-desk-of-the-internet-cafe-"......

Dave and I woke up at 6 this morning to go and pretend to be ultra-cool BBC reporters - he the tape runner and I the fixer - so that we could watch the festivities, look at really big hats and interview scummy politicians. Despite Dave spilling the coffee (clumsy boy) we arrived with croissants and coffee for everyone to ingratiate ourselves for the trouble we caused by being impostures of useful beings.

There was certainly lots of politics - but more of this later... At South Africa's opening of parliament, there were none of the boring grey suits of British MPs with an occasionally bright tie, but predictably the color of their party, instead there was a riot of color! The MPs wore African traditional dresses with bold patterns and energetic colors, feather stacked botats and even fairy wings. As the MPs milled around outside parliament greeting each other after the summer break like long lost friends, the media crushed around the best dressed to snatch a photo. One MP and his wife that got much attention for him dressed in a sharp suit and cravat and handkerchief which matched her shiny polka-dot dress, donning shades that would have been equally at home at the opening of the Oscars. Along the concourse towards parliament's doors a drum group beat confident rhythms and flung their bodies in energetic dance of foot stamping, groin rolling and arm shaking. Maya and I dared to try out having one foot on the red carpet, every inch of which was being unconsciously swept in anticipation of Mbeki's arrival.

Dave why do you say unconsciously swept? doesn't make sense really?

Haha! ......conscientiously

I looked on in amazement as Dave, with his tiny digital camera, shouldered aside the real cameramen with lenses the length of my arm and nobody complained. Our incredibly stylish bright blue bibs, which not only matched my blue dress but also claimed we were technical somethings for RSA parliament, were clearly working well. Not only did they allow feats such as Dave's (a bit like David taking on many Goliaths all at once and without the added protection of the invocation of God) but they also served to make us invisible and i watched as the gazes of the politicians, looking out for friends or people to network with, slid right off us as if we were covered in grease. We were summoned back to the tent to watch Dave's dad do a live interview and Dave and I were told to tell the SABC in the tent next door that they had to be quiet, much to their chagrin. Without even time to discuss it before we went live one of the crew, a black woman with curly braids, looked on in enforced silence with folded arms and an irate expression. I anxiously bit my lip and hoped she'd get over it. I didn't want to take her on, very sure of who would come out on top. I had learnt early on never to try to argue with an angry black mama - especially if you were brought up polite and English.

Mbeki's arrival was signaled by.....you're never going to guess....a Scottish bagpipe band! As I pinched myself to check this was real, Mbeki strolled along the (rad) red carpet (surprisingly short in real life) and turned at the column-flanked entrance to parliament to hold his hand on his heart for the rousing South African national anthem. He then spun on his heel and disappeared into the parliament house.

Maya we never finished, lets carry on like it was last Friday...

OK cool...As Dave and I ran around looking for the hard copies of the speech (now posted on the net here) the BBC team clustered around the recorder concentrating on what was being said. We made it back in time for page 5 of the 15 page speech and watched as Peter and Jackie highlighted sections, read ahead and made comments in the margin ready for the summary which Peter would have to write almost immediately. Then Dave went off to take photos of the MPs coming out of the doors to parliament and once again I saw wee Dave right at the front of the fray (no sense of original sin clearly).

Meanwhile Maya, and my Dad, were making the most of the short period of time between the MPs spilling out of parliament and slinking into their cars to interview the most important. Frantic interviewing took place! Maya, mike holder extraordinaire, first quizzed Tokyo Sexwale and then Jacob Zuma. Why were they relevant? The most important background to the speech is Mbeki, current president, is, in fact, no longer head of the leading party, the ANC. In December, he lost the vote to Jacob Zuma in a bitter leadership battle. It is described to have split the party, so now MPs are described as pro or anti Mbeki - Sexwale is anti-Mbeki. He criticized Mbeki's lack of comment on crime and HIV (Mbeki dedicated one line to the issue - especially shocking when an average Mbeki sentence is 5 lines long). Jacob Zuma in interview was impossible to draw into making anything other than vague positive comments, keen in appearance to be working with the Mbeki. When asked what he would give Mbeki out of 10 for the speech, he just giggled infectiously and replied “I’m not a teacher!”

Maya, what’s Sexwale's role? He once thought about running for head of the ANC after Mandela and now a businessman and but still powerful ANC member right?

Sexwale is South Africa's most liked businessman. Charming and polite he ran for president this year as he was nominated. He is VERY rich and extremely polite and charismatic. Many woman thinks he’s really good-looking. But very important guy in ANC.

Great. :-) I was meanwhile grabbed by the cameraman to hold the mike and quiz the leader of the opposition, Helen Zille. I was told to ask her what her impressions of the speech were. She cast a long steely stare right back at me, her icy eyes framed by her dramatic upward flaring hair, and she fired out her points in machine gun style. She said Mbeki wasn't a leader of the country but a middle manager in charge of an inefficient administration. And, by doing, stuck the knife into one of the most controversial issue facing South Africa at the moment...that there are now two centers of power: president Mbeki and Jacob Zuma as leader of the ANC and she is using the resulting confusion to dis the legitimacy of both.

After that most people left. Dave and I went off to pick up lunch (being the lackeys) and then I went off to my guitar lesson and picked Dave up later. In the meantime Dave watched his dad do a five minute interview with Helen Zille which must have been fascinating. On Mbeki, I have been feeling desperately sorry for this man who has spent his entire childhood, university, exile and post-apartheid adult years being prepared for or actually running this organization by whom he had now been rejected in a most embarrassing manner. He is not easily able to swallow his pride methinks and if he manages it, dusts himself off and proceeds to use his great intelligence for good in our country I shall be most impressed and relieved. However I think it more likely that he will disappear to nurse his wounds in solitude which is a great shame as we shall have lost an intuitive and useful mind.

Oh well.. moving on to dealing with our next crisis. Energy and Business Unusual:)

But luckily no power sharing in this internet cafe Maya! Get back to work! :)