A full quota of African democrats

So splendid was the agenda, and so eloquently was it read, and so warm were the sunbeams streaming down through the stained-glass representation of the ascension of Idi Amin, that the delegates at the first sitting of the Pan African Parliament decided to adjourn for half an hour to indulge their democratic ecstasies.

As they licked the goose-liver pâté off Salticrax in the banquet area their murmurs were unanimous: there had never been a more democratic agenda in the history of democracy. The will of the people had been heeded. The people didn’t want to talk about Zimbabwe and, presto! Zimbabwe was not on the agenda. The people found it tiresome to talk about the Great Lakes region and Darfur, and just like that, in an orgasm of democratic excellence, they too had disappeared from the discussion table.

In fact, as Gertrude Mongella, the president and speaker of the gathering, settled herself behind a tray of sausage rolls, she realised that every single person in the room was a democrat, in some way or another. Last weekend she had been challenged by an undemocratic newspaper about the efficacy of a parliament intended to foster democracy comprising many non-democratic countries, and she’d run rings round their reactionary pseudo-logic.

‘We are at different levels of democracy,” she’d said, and as she reached for the mustard she congratulated herself on the clarity of her democratic vision. What the naive reactionaries would never understand was almost all countries were democracies. The feudal dictatorships of the United States and Great Britain liked wagging fingers at North Korea and Saudi Arabia, but the democratic facts remained: there is no poverty in Saudi Arabia; homosexuality has been eradicated with tremendous success; nowhere are woman safer than in the tight embrace of their husbands.

In fact, Saudi women don’t even have to work or go to school. As for North Korea, was it afflicted with racism? Bourgeois materialism? Surely any country in which food shortages affected all equally, and no one had more political rights than anyone else (including farm animals and tree stumps), was evidence of the flourishing of multi-leveled democracy?

Her reveries were interrupted by the popping of the official champagne cork signaling the next session. Already the ushers were gently frisking the Senegalese group, notorious for smuggling out crème brûlée under their fezzes, and the delegation from Chad had accelerated their efforts at the meatball table, stuffing their jacket pockets with reckless zeal.

When they took their seats, accompanied by the unmistakable sound of pilfered lasagne being sat upon, it emerged that the first order of business — a discussion over the appropriateness of spelling Africa with a ‘c” rather than the more ethnic ‘k” — had been bumped in favour of a snap debate over racial quotas in sport, chaired by the African National Congress Youth League.

The league’s credentials as chair were unquestionable and its impartiality legendary: its openness to democratic adaptation had been underlined by its insistence on quotas — to the point of threatening boycotts and, 18 months later, its declaration that quotas were unworkable and unsatisfactory.

‘What is sport?” whispered the leader of the Mauritanian delegation. ‘I have not heard of this.”

‘You know,” whispered his Sudanese counterpart. ‘Shooting at black women and children from the back of Isuzu pickups, that sort of thing. Sport.”

‘And why would you need racial quotas?”

‘It is more democratic that way.”

In a makeshift tent of jackets propped up with rulers, the Zimbabwean delegation was desperately trying to get clear reception on the earpieces issued by Jonothan Moyo’s Information Ministry. At last the static cleared, and the tent was collapsed with a flourish. The Zimbabwean chairperson raised his hand. Harare wished to speak.

‘Why is there still debate about the efficacy of racial quotas in sport? ‘Surely …” The chairperson poked at his eardrum and flinched as a flock of pigeons a thousand miles away raised hell with the signal; but quickly his feed resumed. ‘Surely any right-thinking person has to see what a perversion of democracy they are; how they obstruct the processes of ensuring that African democracies henceforth field only black players?

The Zimbabwean cricket team has proved the no no dammit I ordered a blonde girl, not this cow, get her out of here. The Zimbabwean cricket team oh for the love of God can’t anyone organise a decent hooker any more?”

There was a smattering of applause, and then they adjourned for lunch.