Humble Thuli more than qualified for top job

In her quietly understated way, former public protector Thuli Madonsela has carved through the emotive and sometimes irrational debate over the succession raging between different factions within the ANC.

Madonsela was not always flavour of the month among the ruling party’s leaders, but went about her task in a dignified manner that was as impressive in the issues – mistakenly thought immune from question or criticism – her office tackled.

Asked at a meeting of the Cape Town Press Club about any outside chance of making herself available as a presidential candidate, Madonsela’s reply was typical.

“I am neither qualified to be president, nor interested in that job,” she said, in a phrase, showing her innate humility but, equally typically, a steel inner core hardened by the harsh realities of the complexities lurking beneath the shifting sands of South African political expediency.

But Madonsela, on a fellowship at Harvard University, favoured a female to take over from President Jacob Zuma, adding the rider that as long as she was not a “proxy” president “because that would be worse than having a man”.

But another of Madonsela’s attributes was her ability to get her point across in what she left unsaid.

Without naming names, she in effect blanked out some of the gloss being spray-painted on the current frontrunners, erasing the traditional succession claims of Cyril Ramaphosa and those of the ANC Women’s League’s stated choice, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, while underlining her personal preference for a president who would get South Africa “back on track”.

It is a pity Madonsela has again publicly distanced herself from the top job. The underlying feeling is that many South Africans would vote for her in a heartbeat.

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