Three Days in Parliament

I'm happy to report that I'm back in Grahamstown and slowly settling in to digs life. It's been an exciting time, with plenty of plans milling around in my head for Christians @ Rhodes and for my Master's degree. And that's why I ended up spending three of my last days in Cape Town at Parliament.

You see, last year a woman in my parents' church who is one of the managers of Parliament's operations happened to mention to my Mom that there were a couple of areas in Parliament that were desperately in need of some linguistic research. My Mom told me, and I had an interview with the Parliament manager. After hearing that Parliament was opening early for the year, I scheduled in a few days to observe what was going on there and see if there was an area I could concentrate my Master's degree on, before I headed back to Grahamstown,.

Well, the linguistic side of things was very interesting, but I'm going to have about two years to look at that, so I thought I'd blog just about the experience of being there.

I took a bus into the centre of Cape Town on a Tuesday to go and sit in on a parliamentary committee meeting which was set up to decide whether or not to fire Vusi Pikoli, the National Director of Public Prosecutions. The bus leaves my parents' neighbourhood way early to get to town by 9am, and the meeting only started at 10am, so I packed my Bible and snuck into St George's Cathedral for a quiet time before the meeting started.

Getting into Parliament in the first place was quite a mission. I expected security checks, but nothing like what I found there. At first I called at a boom gate into the parliamentary precinct, but the policeman on duty there said I wasn't allowed in without a permit. I had heard the previous day that there was a visitors' centre, so I asked the cop for directions to that. I had to walk around a long block and through some glass doors and a metal detector before I could even report to the visitors' centre desk and ask for a permit. Then I could walk through to the building where the meeting was to be held, through another metal detector. All this time I was rather clueless about where to go and what to do. My mind cast back to those anthropologists we had talked about in class, adventurers who landed on a remote island armed with little more than a toothbrush and hunting knife, unable to understand the natives' language. Fortunately a security guard at the second metal detector saw my lostness and showed me through to the Old Assembly Chamber where the meeting was happening.

I was directed to the public gallery, where I could watch the action happen one floor below. MPs milled in and out, shaking hands and hugging each other with surprising congeniality. Then they took their place sitting in the rows of green leather benches staring each other down along the sides of the room: four rows for the ruling party on the left; four rows for the opposition on the right; chairpersons in three chairs in the middle, facing towards me. All the benches had desks in front of them with microphones, and whenever people wanted to speak, they would push a button on their desks to switch on a little red light indicating that their microphone was on.

On the first day I was there, Vusi Pikoli gave a presentation on why he should be allowed to keep his job, followed by some long question-and-answer sessions where he was grilled by the MPs. The next day Minister of Justice Enver Surty and Frank Chikane from the president's office came in ostensibly to answer questions from the MPs, but really just to give reasons why he should be fired. The whole thing was quite a charade actually, with the ANC MPs desperately scratching around for reasons to fire Pikoli and the opposition expressing its disapproval at every turn, asking Pikoli what he thinks the real motive for his suspension was. Someone's written a very good opinion piece on the committee meetings I went to, which I suggest you read if you'd like to find out more about the political issues at the meetings: http://www.mg.co.za/article/2009-01-26-tragedy-and-farce. I don't know if I could say it better, so I won't.

Two of the things that struck me about my visit to Parliament were the put-on politeness of the MPs and the genuine friendliness of the staff that I talked to. Parliamentary etiquette prescribes a very polite way of saying things: plenty of 'thank you's are said and MPs are referred to as "The Honourable" so and so. This type of language is used even when debate gets heated. Also, Chikane, Surty and some of the ANC MPs professed to be friends of Pikoli on the one hand, but harshly criticised him, arguing that he was unfit for office, on the other. I can only imagine how much he felt betrayed by this.

On the other hand, I found the parliamentary staff excellent in their willingness to go out of their way to help me. The security guard who showed me into the public gallery struck up a conversation with me the next day, showing interest in what I was doing. And on my third day in Parliament I had an appointment to interview the head of the language services division. He was wonderful in giving me a tour around the division and in introducing me to others whose work I was interested in. I had a very fruitful morning talking to them.

Why was there such a difference between the false politeness of the MPs and the friendliness of the parliamentary staff? I think it must have something to do with their respective jobs: the staff are there to serve, while the MPs are there to oversee what government does, be critical and score a few political points along the way if possible. But it was more than just a job thing; it was an attitude thing. It makes sense of Jesus' words: "You know that in this world kings are tyrants, and officials lord it over the people beneath them. But among you it should be quite different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant." (Matthew 20:25-26). If we are servants, we'll have the right attitude to leadership, and false politeness will fade away in the face of genuine interest in others' well-being. Or at least that's what my three days in Parliament taught me.