‘We have enough conflicts in Africa … we don’t need more’

”Madam president, please can you intervene as we are being bombarded by the honourable member’s cellphone,” an MP stood to complain about a fellow MP whose phone continually emitted an irksome guttural ringtone as Imbia Sylvester from Cameroon was making his presentation.

Bringing the house to order, Gertrude Mongella firmly said to the technology-savvy MP: ‘I give you a minute to go out and switch off your phone. I have heard that cellphone more than 100 times.” The MP would not move; at which point the MP who had complained, helpfully told the president that in Sierra Leone, if a member of Parliament defies an order, a sergeant-at-arms escorts him out forcefully. The errant MP from North Africa then walked out, to applause from the other MPs.

But that was not the end of the infraction as another MP, Rajab Ahmed from Egypt, then stood up to complain that the Sierra Leonean MP had said that Arabs think that they are ‘superior”. While Ahmed regretted the behaviour of his fellow MP and also found his ‘cellphone annoying” he said that all the same, he felt offended that the MP had made that comment. ‘We are Africans and we don’t think we are superior,” he declared.

Mongella explained that the house does not discriminate on the basis of gender, colour or tribe. ‘If I had heard it I would have taken sterner measures,” she said adding, to applause and good-natured laughter ‘we have enough conflicts in Africa, we don’t need to create our own”.

The commotion was preceded by five-minute contributions from MPs who had gathered in Johannesburg for the sixth ordinary session of the Pan-African Parliament.

When the house was brought to order, it was the turn of Gaborone Olebile from Botswana to bemoan the fact that some countries had not submitted themselves for review. The African Peer Review Mechanism evaluated Ghana, Rwanda and Kenya. ‘It’s not right that some countries are above review.”

If a sub-Saharan African and a North African were ‘fighting”, at least there was bonhomie between the sexes. Rwandan MP Juliana Kantengwa found a reason to praise her country for being the African country with the most female parliamentarians in the world — close to 49%. ‘They made a conscious step [because] we can’t go it alone,” she said, to applause, from the men especially. Kantengwa proceeded to praise the African stories she was hearing: ‘At school I learned European history. Now I can learn about Africa.”

If at times English translation signals were lost, the same cannot be said about the brutal efficiency with which the microphones were switched off on MPs who went beyond their allotted five minutes. ‘The bell has gone off — and your time is up,” madam president old the most loquacious MPs.