It really is time we were rid of the exercise in the vainglorious called the opening of Parliament. Apart from obvious reasons, like the steadily mounting costs of the affair, there are many other grounds for abandoning what has become a toe-curling embarrassment. There seems to be only one overriding justification for this event: our political leaders have become so utterly besotted with themselves, so irretrievably vain, they can’t do without their regular public adorations.
Once were freedom’s fighters, now metamorphosed as the revolution’s de luxe royalty. There they were last Friday, all the cousins, uncles, courtiers, footmen, the massed nephews, sashaying up to Parliament, waving languidly at the worshipping crowds: red-carpet junkies getting their fix.
Given the almost daily condemnations by our politicians of the terrible evils colonialism has lavished on Africa, the opening of Parliament, with its somewhat pathetic emulation of all that is English, is a puzzling inconsistency. We may have adopted the Westminster style of Parliament, yet once a year the same politicians insist on imitating traditional English formalities and rituals: the solemn processions, the lugging over the shoulder of the mace, the military bands, the gaudy uniforms. Just like Hendrik Verwoerd, John Vorster, PW Botha et al used to do.
Another principal reason for the jamboree is that it serves as a sort of fashion show for the wives and consorts of politicians and senior civil servants. What relevance this display of finery has to the affairs of state is anybody’s guess. They may as well ponce around the Kenilworth race course at the Met.
For a good deal of the time that’s where the SABC television commentary team seemed to think they were. A member of the Elle magazine editorial staff had been commandeered to witter on about the ‘fashion statements” being made by the women’s apparel; someone else said that first lady Zanele Mbeki’s sari ‘sent a message about liberation to all women”.
Most ridiculous of all was the always dutiful Vuyo Mbuli, who drivelled at length about President Thabo Mbeki’s choice of tie for the occasion. How long did he spend agonising about the appropriate one, making sure it was neither too frivolous nor too sombre? What ‘message” did the tie transmit? It was some quaint lampoon.
Predictably, the SABC was up to what its masters expected. One thing you have to say for Auckland Park, they make no bones about their role as a public relations organisation charged with the furtherance of the African National Congress — there is, after all, an election looming.
Last Friday’s coverage was dripping with the treacled political flattery one associates with those ‘people’s information about the democratic triumphs of the Socialist state” films of Mao’s China. All this show lacked were inserts of happy communal peasants singing patriotic songs in sunny fields. A few vast portraits of ‘our beloved president and inspired leader, Comrade Mbeki” and the similarity would have been complete. Not that the grandness of the occasion inspired the SABC television crews and directors to abandon their renowned technical ineptitude. Microphones worked only intermittently, camerawork was dismal. The alfresco studio was set up in the windiest place they could find.
There was an interview with an acting director general of the Department of Health, in which what she had to say was completely obliterated by wind noise.
Comments were gleaned after Mbeki’s State of the Nation address. Quite a few of those interviewed complained that the president had said nothing about HIV/Aids. In fact he did, but very obliquely and by reading into his address a great swadge from a recent unctious newspaper article by Rian Malan in which he had generously shared his 1994 democratic apotheosis with us all. How lucky we South African white folk are to have Malan, someone to render trembling banalities on behalf of our pallid souls.
I wondered why he got such a big mention and then realised that it was a very obvious payback. In his recent writings, Malan’s come out strongly, if not in direct support of Aids dissidents, certainly in providing valuable tactical comfort for Mbeki’s oddball beliefs on the subject. Getting a great big mention in the State of the Nation address was a fitting gratuity.
The award for most pleasing inanity of the occasion goes to Mbuli for his line: ‘Mr Mandela has attended all the State of Nation addresses, including the ones he gave.” I’ve heard of the Madiba magic, but never thought transubstantiation was a feature of it.