The Mail & Guardian can reveal that this week’s launch of the Pan African Parliament (PAP) went ahead thanks to quick action by the intelligence community and foreign affairs staff who fought off freedom of expression activists, Christian fundamentalists and a women’s lobby group.
Unconfirmed reports say one-time South African teeny-bopper pop outfit Boom Shaka were due to perform at the opening ceremony of the launch on Thursday. The idea was to honour one of Africa’s most famous warrior kings, Shaka ka Senzangakhona, by booking a youthful band whose rise coincided with the birth of democracy.
That was until the band submitted their playlist, which included their seminal hit It’s About Time and one song titled Makwere (Alien). The organisers were worried that the derogatory term used for African foreigners would have no place in an august setting celebrating Africa in all her diversity.
The band were promptly dropped from the list, leaving freedom-of-expression activists exercising their constitutionally guaranteed right to vent some unprintables to the event management company. The Rollback Xenophobia Campaign is said to have come out in defence of the event management outfit.
Another unconfirmed report was that the Government Communication and Information System, in collusion with the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), apparently gagged the media from reporting on a march by Mothers for Maintenance (MFM).
The M&G can reveal that the women organised the march after hearing that the launch will cost South African taxpayers R61-million. They said they had become particularly disappointed and suspicious when PAP President Gertrude Mongella was reluctant to reveal how much the launch would cost and whether South Africa would foot the bill.
When asked why the MFM had marched against an institution unrelated to deadbeat fathers, spokesperson Mantwa Mashaya responded that the MFM had seen through the government’s wicked plan.
”The justice department officials are always telling our members going to their offices to collect monies owed to them that our former partners have not paid. Now we hear that the government is spending so many millions on papgeld [porridge money]. Is that fair, you tell me?
”As for Mongella, one would have expected her, as a woman, to have had more feeling for this type of wastage of money when there are hungry children out there,” said Mashaya.
Unbeknown to the dumbfounded Ministry of Foreign Affairs official sent to accept the MFM’s marchers’ memorandum, maintenance money is called papgeld in township parlance.
Mashaya and her crew later conceded that they had not read the reports properly and thought the ”PAP” budget was an official word for a term they had always known.
”How can [the government] expect us [mothers] to afford newspapers when so-called fathers are not playing their parts, or expect you to hear the news properly when a child is continuously crying on your back? It is all these men’s fault. I hope you support your children,” she said, wagging a threatening finger at this reporter.
According to sources close to the NIA, Christian fundamentalists were opposed to the idea of scores of interpreters who were to do duty at what they called the ”Tower of Babel” — Gallagher Estate in Midrand. They argued that it was God’s plan that nations should not speak in one tongue and understand each other.
Quoting from the Bible (Genesis 11: 1 to 9), the faithful said: ”And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the sons of men had built. And the Lord said, ‘Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.’”
The potentially volatile situation, with the fundamentalists calling for a holy war, was averted with the intervention of the South African Council of Churches, which mediated between the government and the churchmen.
The NIA said that, in keeping with policy, it will neither confirm nor deny its operations.
Pundits argued that PAP scored its first tangible victory by averting a tribal war between the Zulus and the Shangaan/Venda/Pedi alliance from Limpopo over who should host the Parliament. It was decided that Gauteng, as a more cosmopolitan province — and home to most of the country’s illegal immigrants — may as well officially welcome those from the diaspora to South Africa.