Advocate Thuli Madonsela, the Public Protector, may be on her way out of that office in a couple of months, but she will forever be remembered for her sterling work and as the brave little woman who took the bull by the horns.
She did what no one ever did in that office, challenged the president and won. Others before her were nothing but bootlickers of the ANC.
Madonsela thoroughly knew the responsibilities and powers her office carried with it. The good thing about what she has done is that she has set a benchmark for her successors. Whoever takes over from her will not be judged on what that person does, but against what Madonsela did.
We shall say to that person: “Thuli went this far, and how far can you go?” Already the judiciary has started exerting its independence on various rulings, the most notable being the judgement that calls for the reinstatement of the corruption charges against Zuma.
Those charges were dropped by a man who was appointed solely to come and drop the charges, and he did just that, and off he disappeared into thin air and we have, up to today, never heard from him again.
Madonsela has set the bar very high, not just for the Office of the Public Protector and those who will come after her, but for all Chapter 9 institutions and other spheres of public institutions, which can safely be said to be undergoing a quiet revolution.
Now all the eyes of South Africans are now focused, not just on Madonsela’s successor, but on the IEC. Everybody is waiting with bated breath to see whether the IEC can deliver a free and fair election, free from the chaos that characterised the last national elections in which ballot boxes were found strewn all over the place.
People are waiting to see whether the IEC, which is known have a cadre deployment policy, will emulate Madonsela’s wonderful work and begin to assert its independence and move away from being an imbongi (poet) of the ruling party – which had cleverly crafted the cadre deployment policy in order to ensure it loaded public institutions with its own people whose continued existence in those positions is guaranteed by their loyalty to the master.
It goes without saying that he who pays the piper calls the tune, but this only happens when you don’t understand the powers packed into the Chapter 9 institutions, and it’s up to those who take up those positions to read deep and understand and exercise those powers.
IEC, after your blatant blunders in the last national elections, which almost plunged the country into chaos, re ho shebile (we’re watching you).
