Regina Mohlomi laughs readily, and loudly. And when she stops walking up Parliament Avenue to her office to chat to you, often a playful glint sparkles in her eyes. Her office, by the way, is just to the right of the stairs of the National Assembly, with sightlines to the bust of Nelson Mandela.

It’s the other side of Mohlomi. Most South Africans would be familiar with her public formal ceremonial role as serjeant-at-arms carrying into the National Assembly the mace, the symbol of Parliament’s authority that must be secured in front of the presiding officer’s platform to show the House is in session.

It’s in that role Mohlomi found herself at the sharp end of the chaos in the National Assembly when the EFF arrived after the 2014 elections with chants of “Pay back the money” and refused to leave the House when ordered out. During the farewell motion in the House on 21 November 2019 several MPs spoke about this, including EFF MP Nazier Paulsen:

“Our first contact with Mam’ Regina was when we were evicted from this House. She came to us. She approached us in a gentle and kind manner and tried to avoid the inevitable. But of course, history would have it that whatever ensued after that, had to ensue. Because there was no other way for the EFF to announce its arrival on the parliamentary political scene.”

Mohlomi has a different take.

“The National Assembly Table staff weren’t supported as they should have been,” said Mohlomi. No-one had checked whether they were okay, whether they were frightened or traumatised.

And yet, it was back to work for the team, with no excuses.

“We knuckled down. We went back the next day… We did not have any processes, procedures on place for this particular problem we were experiencing at the time. But we came back,” said Mohlomi with no small measure of pride in her colleagues’ professionalism and perseverance. “We came, even though we did not get the support I feel we should have gotten.”

A teacher and trade unionist, including a stint as National Education and Allied Workers’ Union Parliament branch chairperson – those are life and career experiences that still mark how Mohlomi walks in the parliamentary corridors where she first arrived in 1996 to work in HR before becoming serjeant-at-arms in February 2011.

She has an open-door policy. Quite literally. And people come in and out of her office, to say hello, to ask something, to get paperwork signed or, of course, for the more formal and official interactions. There is an iron in the office, just in case the black robe and starkly white shirt that make up the ceremonial attire need a last-minute touch-up.

As serjeant-at-arms, Mohlomi manages a team of just over 40, from chamber staff to the National Assembly Table, or the senior parliamentary officials who ensure all goes smooth during a sitting, and the questions office.

The job involves ceremonial duties, but also maintaining discipline and security in the House, quality control over translations and questions, with a good dose of admin.

Mohlomi became the first women serjeant-at-arms on 10 February 2011 – and on her first day on the job walked into the House then-president Jacob Zuma, then chief justice Sandile Ngcobo and others as part of the traditional procession for that day’s State of the Nation Address.

That day her predecessor Godfrey Cleinwerck (who died in February 2016) found himself for the first time in the public gallery. The two had worked together since May 2007 when Mohlomi started as under-secretary for table administration in the National Assembly.

Over the past eight years, Mohlomi put her own stamp on the serjeant-at-arms job. For example, it was never certain in what language she would announce the House was in session, until she spoke – and she speaks all 11 official languages, although she’ll insist some flow more fluently than others.

And she’s made sure protocol’s observed, fully. And there were some transgressors as House Chairperson Mmatlala Boroto admitted during the 21 November 2019 motion

“I am the culprit here because I know you would always come to my office and I would already be sitting behind the chamber here… You would say, ‘Huh uh, House Chair, it’s my job to come and fetch you if you have to open in the House’. I really apologise for giving you a hard time and for not listening to your protocol.”

But there’s a line Mohlomi has not crossed. Officials are that – officials, who for their own credibility and professionalism should never stray into matters political.

“I have learned the idea that as an official you would try and blur the boundaries can get you into a heal of a lot of trouble. Even if you don’t lose your job, you lose your own sense of self…”

At age 59, Mohlomi is looking to find another self.

And that’s where her four-hectare plot of land in an agricultural area in the south of Pretoria – “the farmland of the boere in the olden days,” she describes it – comes in.

“The reason I did this was first of all to get fresh air,” Mohlomi laughs. But there’s more to it: it’s also the opportunity to go back to growing vegetables as her grandmother had done in the small yard of the little Mamelodi council house she grew up at.

“Mamelodi has taught me a lot of things, but I wanted to go out there and live a different life… It’s a challenge that says to me go and live out there. This is your country. You can live anywhere you like.”

And as she was thinking of getting her own place after selling up in Cape Town, thoughts turned to “I must go grow my own food…”

It’ll be a learning curve. But it may not just be only for Mohlomi. If the one-time teacher has her way, the local children will get their own learning curve. “We need to teach. I think teaching about Parliament will be a very sexy thing. Children may want to become politicians one day…”

Mohlomi is finishing up and packing up. She had wanted to retire in mid-2019, but was asked to stay on. No formal face-to-face handover will happen given the job was only recently advertised and it’s now the year-end parliamentary recess. But whoever steps into that office will find folders and folders of information, handover notes and reports.

Yes, Mohlomi says, there’s sadness – despite the prospect of a very different life of smallholder farming and a farmhouse that will be “simple and big!”.

She laughs, and then takes a more serious turn, paying tribute to the generosity of her colleagues and staff.

“I have experienced generosity. I thank my colleagues… I was allowed to be me… People accepted me and my idiosyncrasies and the eccentricities and the noise… The noise,” Mohlomi laughs. “They have accepted, if Regina is angry she’s angry and you will know it. If she’s happy, you will know it.”

The leave-taking by colleagues unfolded over the past six weeks, with people reminding her of special moments. “I got hugs I got kisses I got teas I got gifts….”

Against the prospect of many new things in a new chapter of life, one thing is definitely dead – the fear of tripping and falling.

It never went away over eight years, and every time she carried that 10kg mace to the podium it was with the refrain: “Do not fall, do not fall”. And the snap of locks that hold the mace in place on the podium was a most welcomed noise, confirming the mace would not fall.

“You know how happy I am I did not fall. I’m leaving and that fear must be gone now,” Mohlomi smiles. DM