Thuli Madonsela said No

Thulisile Madonsela

It's been a year of depressing news on all sorts of fronts – in fact make that twelve months since the year is still pretty young. Nevertheless, this month has witnessed what I believe to be a major turnaround in South Africa’s fortunes. I’m not talking about the economy or a change in direction of the government or any other sudden positive development. I’m talking about one woman who stood up and said no, and kept saying no despite being denigrated and threatened. And who kept on doing it until she won.

Thuli Madonsela started life as the daughter of immigrants from Swaziland to apartheid South Africa. They were ‘informal traders’ – people who sell things at street markets and make a small profit by buying in bulk from suppliers and splitting up the goods into packages that people can afford. She went to school in Soweto in the years of violence and friction with the South African police, and then studied at the University of Swaziland. She obtained a law degree from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg in 1990. After obtaining her degree, she worked with the trade union movement and the United Democratic Front – essentially the internal wing of the ANC in the last years of apartheid - and she is a long term member of the ANC. In 1996, she was part of the team that drafted the South African Constitution.

In 2014 she made Time magazine's list of the world's 100 most influential people in the Leadership category, and last year she was awarded two honorary doctorates by two of the country’s leading universities.  She carries a heavy workload and is a single mother of two; her husband died very young.

Before the first democratic elections, she was offered nomination for an ANC seat as a member of parliament.  She declined because she felt that she could contribute more actively. She has certainly done so.

In October 2009, President Jacob Zuma appointed her as Public Protector, a position established by the Constitution to strengthen constitutional democracy and good governance. It’s independent from the state and has the power to investigate and make recommendations on improper dealings within government, which hamper service-delivery, abuse taxpayers’ money and perpetuate poverty and inequality. No doubt Zuma expected her to be grateful, and restrict her activities to the day to day matters that came to her office.  Big mistake.

Nkandla upgraded

As he signed off on her appointment, Zuma’s mind was elsewhere. He was in the process of a major upgrade to his country home known as Nkandla. I mean a major upgrade – around $25 million at the time. And he didn’t have – or certainly didn’t mean to spend – the money. That was no problem. He was going to make the state pay for it i.e. the taxpayers.

Pretty soon Madonsela was involved in some pretty high profile matters.  She pointed out the corruption of the ANC Youth League leader – Julius Malema – and the fallout from that eventually drove him from the ANC to form his own radical party.  People in high places started to feel uncomfortable with their supposedly tame ANC-appointed Public Protector.

Inevitably, journalists discovered what was going on at Nkandla. Zuma shrugged it off, but questions started to be asked in parliament. Eventually the president explained that what had taken place was a “security upgrade.”  Because of his role as president, he needed additional security and areas for safe assembly and public gatherings. These included an arena as an “evacuation area” and a “fire pool” to store water in case of fire in the thatch-roofed complex.  Hmm.

'Fire' Pool

The 'safety arena'. Looks a lot like a retaining wall. Coincidence, surely!

The case was referred to Madonsela who took her time to do a fair and thorough investigation. Her findings in 2014 were that Zuma and his family had enriched themselves at the taxpayers’ expense and that he should pay back much of the money.  She was immediately vilified as having exceeded her authority, produced inaccurate conclusions, and she was even accused of being an agent for the CIA! (The last was withdrawn after she threatened to sue.) She was also told she had acted outside the constitution. Strange – after all she helped write it.

The president ignored her recommendations and provided his own report which cleared him of all wrong-doing. He has survived many scandals; this one too would pass.

But it didn’t. In a government and civil service fraught with corruption and inefficiency, few things stick in the public’s attention, but this was one of them. The opposition parties wouldn’t let it go away. And eventually, when they were blocked by the ANC majority in parliament, they – and Madonsela - took the matter to the Constitutional Court (South Africa’s equivalent to the Supreme Court).

The Constitutional Court - without Fire Pool

The Court heard the case last week. Judgment is reserved, but it’s all over. Zuma’s council admitted that he was wrong, that the Public Protector did have the authority she had claimed under the constitution, that the Zuma report had no status. 

Will this mark the end of corruption in South Africa? Certainly not. It does mark the end of a culture that the highest in the land are above the law. And it has shaken the government, still reeling from Zuma’s arbitrary firing of the finance minister at the start of the year.  It’s not the end of corruption, but it just may be the end of President Jacob Zuma.

Michael - Thursday

Theatre of the absurd

South Africa’s politics at the moment are pretty bizarre, given it has an incompetent, self-aggrandizing, polygymous president in Jacob Zuma, whose private residence in Nkandla, Zululand has been upgraded with state funds because of security concerns to the tune of $20 million or so.  

Zuma's state-funded private residence, Nkandla

This whole episode in itself is an example of the theatre of the absurd as one listens to all sorts of Zuma underlings trying to justify it.  An as-yet-unreleased report on the Nkandla expenditure by public protector, Thuli Madonsela, who is regarded as one of the honest members of government, is eagerly awaited.  We don’t know when it will be released, and there are rumours that an ex Commissioner of Police, the fired Bheki Cele, is demanding time to respond to allegations contained in it that the police failed to stop fruitless and wasteful expenditures.

The rumours also indicate that the ruling party, the ANC, is trying to delay the release of the report until after the elections in April.

However, the mind-boggled citizens of South Africa had their minds hyper-boggled over the last week, not by more antics by the ANC or its members, but by the opposition.

The main opposition party in South Africa is the DA (Democratic Alliance).  It is widely regarded as being the party of the whites, a hang over of various anti-apartheid parties of the past.  The head of the party is Helen Zille, an able politician, but white.  Of course this offers and easy target for the ruling ANC.

The DA controls the Western Province, in which Cape Town is situated, and has about 30% of parliamentary seats in the national assembly. 

Zille is smart enough to realize that the future of the DA is to transform itself into a party that does not have the ‘white’ stigma.

I need to take a little detour here to fill in some backstory.

The famous anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko had a life-long companion in a woman whose name is Mamphela Ramphele.  She is quite an extraordinary person – herself an anti-apartheid activist, banned by the apartheid government – she is also a medical doctor with a strong community-health focus.  She was once managing director of the World Bank, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cape Town, and is a successful business woman.

The remarkable Mamphela Ramphele

A year ago, she started a new political party in South Africa, called Agang South Africa, meaning Build South Africa, in her native tongue of Northern Sotho.  I was excited by this, because I found her approach to the future of the country refreshing.  I was impressed by her credentials and was cautiously optimistic that she would not be tempted by the potential pickings of being a senior government member.

Agang SA was likely to garner my vote at election time.

Back to the story.

So with only a couple of months before the next general elections, the DA’s Zille and Agang’s Ramphele decided to form an alliance.  Since the DA was an established party with decent infrastructure and grass-roots support, it looked to me that the very small Agang was going to be subsumed by the DA.  In return, the DA was going to put forward Ramphele’s name as its presidential candidate.

So on January 28, this new alliance was announced with the two women sealing their alliance with a kiss.

The kiss!

I thought it to be a good move for both parties and felt that the DA had taken a bold move to move towards being seen as a South African party, not a South African whites’ party.  The country was abuzz with the announcement.  It was unexpected; it was bold; and for the first time in many years, it offered something new in South African politics, something that had the potential to be a game-changer.

Now for the bizarre twist.

On January 31, three days later, Ramphele announced that she would NOT stand as the DA presidential candidate and would remain leader of Agang South Africa.

The country was boggled, nay hyper-boggled.

Walking the streets of Cape Town, one could see glazed eyes and shaking heads.  “What the F…?” was the question du jour.

It seems that in the rush to make the announcement – the elections are two months away – neither Zille nor Ramphele had thought through the details before calling a major news conference.  It seems that neither party had been adequately consulted about what was going to happen; for Ramphele to be the DA candidate, she would have had to be a DA member; but the Agang SA constitution prohibits an Agang member from being a member of another party.  Clearly Agang supporters must have revolted, forcing Ramphele to change tack.

Which is a great shame – I do think the alliance was a great idea and would have stirred things up against the ANC, which is suffering in the public’s perception.  There has been the Nkandla scandal; droves of its officials are seen as corrupt; and its management of municipalities has been dismal at best. 

So I think a great chance has been squandered.

I guess the lesson to be learned is that one shouldn’t call a national press conference unless one has all the ducks in a row.

And so the curtain comes down on yet another theatre of the absurd, and ANC members are parodying the Zille-Ramphele kiss at every opportunity.

And political cartoonist, Zaphiro, has had a field day.

Stan - Thursday