Parly not a good advert for Africa

The chaotic scenes at the Pan-African Parliament (PAP) in Midrand – which began last week but continued into this one, disrupting elections for the body – are not a good advertisement for African unity, or this troubled continent of ours.

One of those shouting loudest was EFF leader Julius Malema, whose “we are all one” support of African unity looked increasingly thin as matters got heated.

What is all behind it is – as with much in the convoluted world of the politics of pan-African bodies – difficult to discern.

However, it seems to revolve around the procedures for the election of a new head of the Pan African Parliament.

Quite why everybody present was getting so upset about a position so singularly useless in an organisation so singularly useless, defies comprehension.

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Like its mother body, the African Union (AU), this parliament has very little real power to make decisions, implement policies or change laws across national boundaries.

Ironically, these are the colonial boundaries which politicians like Malema claim to despise, but which are stronger than ever in driving nationalism and xenophobia across Africa.

For us in South Africa, this might seem like little more than yet another African circus – but that must not blind us to the reality of how we are viewed by the rest of the continent.

Many of our fellow Africans regard us as arrogant, uncouth and uneducated compared to them, not to mention exceptionally violent.

There is a point to some of that.

Even before xenophobia became the serious issue that it is now in South Africa, many South Africans – black and white – shared the view that the places north of the Limpopo River were, somehow, much less “civilised” than we were.

In truth, we are in no position, heading as we are towards becoming a failed state, to look down on anyone.