THE Pan-African Parliament descended into chaos on Monday over the issue of rotational leadership instead of direct elections.
During the ensuing chaos, the election debate turned physical as a male Member of Parliament from Senegal tried to kick South Africa’s MP and ANC Chief Whip Pemmy Majodina.
As tempers again frayed Monday, lawmakers wrestled over a white ballot box at the front of the room that was meant to hold the vote papers for the election.
Two women first fought over the box, trying to rip it out of each other’s hands. Other members of the parliament then joined the tussle. Then, an enraged male lawmaker ripped off his suit jacket and aimed a kick in the direction of Majodina of South Africa.
The Senegalese MP said he was not trying to kick Majodina but rather trying to kick a cellphone out of the hand of another lawmaker recording the chaos on his phone.
Majodina has since accepted the apology.
The continental parliament was meant to elect a new president from among the MPs, but a dispute over the rotation of that position led to bitter disagreement.
The fight pitted southern African members against their Francophone colleagues.
The southern African caucus is demanding electoral reforms, saying the position should be on a rotational basis.
But West and Central African members demanded that the elections to go ahead despite the chaos.
“This election cannot proceed without the procedures and the advice that came from AU legal council. No rotation, no election, I declare,” said Zimbabwe’s Barbara Rwodzi, also a member of the ad-hoc committee.
“The AU is the mother body of the Pan-African Parliament and we follow that.”
The proceedings have been postponed until further notice.
Last week, the proceedings came to a screeching halt after a delegate tested positive for COVID-19.
But that meeting last week also first revealed the tensions when South African lawmaker Julius Malema was heard threatening Malian lawmaker Ali Kone in the midst of the sitting.
“I’ll kill you outside. Outside this room, I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you,” Malema, a notoriously fiery leader of a far-left opposition party in South Africa, was heard saying while pointing his finger at Kone.
It all stems from a disagreement between a block of countries from West Africa and a block from southern Africa over whether the presidency should move around the various regions of Africa on a rotational basis. The last two presidents of the Pan-African Parliament have been from West Africa and there’s never been a president from the south in the short history of the parliament, which came into existence in 2004.
“It’s quite a rough and chaotic situation now, and the matter is about the election and rotational principle,” Majodina told SABC.
As the mayhem unfolded, other lawmakers shouted into their microphones that there were “armed men in the room” and called repeatedly for police and security. They claimed that they were being threatened by a group of South Africans with guns. Majodina said there were no guns in the room.
African and international relations expert Dr. Charles Sinkala told the SABC that the scenes, broadcast on television in South Africa, were embarrassing.
“We do not expect elected leaders to behave like such horribles,” he said. “Look at the footage … it’s adults who need adult supervision.”
- Inside Politics. Additional reporting by AP.
