Madonsela not interested in job as SA’s first citizen

Former public protector Advocate Thuli Madonsela on Monday said she has no desire to run for the presidency.

Weighing in on the African National Congress’ hotly contested leadership race, Madonsela told the Cape Town press club that while she would like to see South Africa have its first female president, she thinks the country deserved a leader who would unite the nation, but she was not the woman for the top job.

“I am neither qualified to be president nor interested in that job … Should he be a man, should she be female? At this stage for me, I would like to say I would like to have a female, but I would hate to have a female that’s a proxy,” Madonsela said.

Commenting on her last report as the head of the Chapter 9 institution, The State of Capture, she said some of the information she uncovered in her probe made her “really worried” about the running of the country.

She said her investigation into allegations of “state capture” levelled against President Jacob Zuma, his close friends, the Guptas, including several government officials linked to the controversial family accused of appointing ministers and heads of state-owned companies, was a “highly charged matter, both politically and emotionally”.

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Without the commission of inquiry she recommended the president to investigate the allegations further, the trust deficit between government and the public created by her report would continue to grow as citizens would never know the truth, Madonsela said.

“It may well be that whistleblowers’ like deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas‚ former ANC MP Vytjie Mentor and former government spokesman Themba Maseko were ‘lying’,” she said.

In November, Zuma announced that he intended to challenge the report in court. He wants the report to be reviewed and set aside.

In his founding affidavit to the Pretoria High Court, he argues that it is unconstitutional for the public protector to dictate to him that he should set up the commission, as it straddles the separation-of-powers doctrine.

She refused to be drawn into reports that her successor, Busisiwe Mkhwebane, altered her report into allegations that mega-bank Absa unlawfully benefited from an apartheid-era bailout from the South African Reserve Bank.

On Friday Mail & Guardian reported that Mkhwebane recommends in the preliminary report that the company pay back R2.25 billion to the national fiscus, as the bailout was in breach of the country’s constitution and the Public Finance Management Act.