By Thokozani Mtshali
President Thabo Mbeki this week may have looked like the biblical shepherd whom, Proverbs say, knows his flock. But it appeared during a question session in parliament that his is a huge and diverse flock.
Mbeki was caught off guard as the constitutional guarantee of 11 official languages was put to the test when one of his ANC MPs fired a question in TshiVenda. This prompted the president, who seemed unsure whether this was Venda or Tsonga, to request Local Government Minister Sydney Mufamadi to translate.
The incident highlighted the constraints of the parliamentary translation system, which has often seen MPs and members of the media missing important elements of key debates, when a member switches from English to another language.
Most of the MPs in parliament often use their mother tongues when addressing the house, because they find it more comfortable when engaging in some of the more robust debates.
These are often translated, but the essence usually gets lost in the interpretation.
This week it appeared that there was no one to give Mbeki and the MPs an English version of the question, prompting the house to burst into laughter as the president gazed around, trying to figure out how to react.
Mbeki knows SeSotho, as well as the Nguni languages - Zulu, Ndebele and Swati, which are similar to Xhosa. He showed his astuteness and that he knew his MPs well by asking Mufamadi to translate, knowing well that, even if this was not Venda, Mufamadi, who is from Limpopo, would have a working knowledge of Tsonga.
"Madam Speaker, can I ask minister Mufamadi to translate here," Mbeki said a few seconds after ANC MP Tovhowani Tshivhase had finished her question. The house burst into laughter.
Mufamadi took the podium in his bid to rescue the president and said: "Speaking in one of the official languages that are recognised in the country, the honourable Tshivhase wants to know - in view of the difficulties that were experienced during the last round of the World Trade Organisation's negotiations - what steps the president thinks South Africa needs to follow."
But Mbeki's question session remained a linguistic soup as the IFP's chief whip Koos van der Merwe brought in Latin during a heated question on the controversial floor-crossing law.
Van der Merwe gave Mbeki a long lecture on how wrong floor-crossing was, but after a while, the presiding officer noted that the chief whip had no question to ask the president.
Van der Merwe responded, "The question is whether the president agrees with the Latin saying "nemo plus iuris ad alium transferre quam ipse haberet"?
Then came the DA's chief whip Douglas Gibson, "Madam Speaker, perhaps Mr Mufamadi can help translate that, too".
Van der Merwe later said all he wanted to tell Mbeki was that floor crossing was "plain electoral fraud".