Cape Town — AllAfrica staffer Verna Rainers blogs from South Africa's parliament on the unusual experience of a high-level French visit to the country.
The gallery of South Africa’s national assembly is the place where citizens and other visitors are invited to watch, listen and, most importantly, say nothing as members of parliament below debate the all-important issues of the day. Then, the moment we leave the hallowed halls of this bastion of our democracy, we can critique our public representatives and hotly debate those issues ourselves.
Last Thursday was different, for it was the day on which President Nicolas Sarkozy of France came to give a speech to a joint sitting of the houses of Parliament.
I arrived just before 1.30 pm, on what turned out to be a rather hot summer’s day in Cape Town’s city centre, respectably clad in the regulation black suit of those who hang around parliament. Immediately I started feeling a bit hot under the collar, when the first thing I saw from high above the floor of the assembly was a member of parliament wearing a very pink jacket.
But then I was distracted by a conversation between the prisons minister, Ngconde Balfour, and the minister whose name has become synonymous with electricity blackouts in South Africa in recent months – Alec Erwin. What could they be speaking about? How prisoners have been affected by power blackouts?
Actually, my real issue-for-the-moment was finding the seat allocated to an occasional visiting journalist. It seemed to have been usurped by schoolchildren who, like everyone else, had come to revel in the experience of being at parliament and catching a glimpse of a French president. I was about to fight for what was mine, when I realised it was not mine… well-spotted, that could have been embarrassing.
I finally came to rest on a very comfortable chair where I could set up my trusted digital recorder, whip out the elegant notepad and strike an intelligent pose. I was just perfecting this when two elegant women approached – alas, I was sitting in the correctly numbered seat, but the wrong row. Oh, the shame!
As “bonjours” replaced the usual hubbub of the gallery, I began to wonder if I was in the right place. But then Sarkozy arrived to a standing ovation and my pulse began to beat faster. How many South Africans have ever seen a French president? Surely I was part of an elite? I cast my eyes over the expensive suits littered around me… there was even a pink jacket or two.
Turning my trusted recorder on, I took the precaution of selecting “lecture” mode and sat back to hear the Speaker welcome the President to beautiful South Africa, again to cheers and applause from the gallery – which I now realized was filled mostly with French speakers. As Sarkozy stepped up to the podium, there were again cheers and applause and those in the gallery around me rose to their feet.
As someone who grew up involved in civil disobedience against the apartheid regime, these displays of respect were a little alien to me. More than that, they were becoming rather tiresome as I had rested the trusted recorder on my lap, hoping not to move it. No matter, the President was at last about to speak.
I wondered what he would say about France’s involvement in energy deals in South Africa. I wondered what exactly he would say about French arms deals with South Africa, and trade. And if I was lucky, I might hear him jokingly refer to his model slash singer slash first lady and new wife. And then: shock. He was speaking French! After all, South African has never been a French-speaking country.
I calmed myself. Maybe he would just open in French as a gesture of some kind. After about 10 minutes the reality of the situation dawned on me. The entire speech would be in his mother tongue, which I had no real issues with, only I couldn’t understand anything and that the trusted recorder – carefully positioned for optimum sound quality – was useless, to me anyway.
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So I turned to a hard copy of the English translation and followed my French comrades around me as they cheered every time something important was said, missing only the nuances which led people to giggle or laugh in places.
It was soon over, and the Speaker asked a parliamentarian with the ubiquitous Afrikaans name of Van der Merwe to propose the vote of thanks. This was the highlight. His first language was clearly Afrikaans, and how proud and amazed I was that he could speak what sounded to me like fluent French.
Not only that, by the raucous laughter he elicited, it seemed he was quite a story-teller as well. Of course I had no clue what he said, for there was no hard copy. But I could see that the South African Parliament had embraced French culture, at least for one afternoon’s session.
