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ANC on a split screen: A kind of Farewell to Thuli Madonsela

Yonela Diko is currently the Spokesperson of the African National Congress (ANC) in the Western Cape. Prior to assuming his role in the ANC, he worked in various companies in the private sector. Between 2007-2009 he worked for one of the Leading Retirement Fund Companies, NBC Holdings as an Employee Benefits Consultant. After that he joined the Corporate Strategy and Industrial Development (CSID), an Economic Research Unit housed under the School of Economics at Wits University. He did his BCom degree at the University of Cape Town majoring in Economics.

It is not unreasonable to say that the office of the Public Protector only truly began with Thuli Madonsela. As such Thuli served as a blank screen on which people of vastly different interests projected their own wishes. She was undoubtedly bound to disappoint many.

But Thuli Madonsela was hardly blameless. Today, the Bapo Ba Mogale community has reason to put some blame on her for the blood spilling on this royal community, over a matter Thuli could have resolved back in 2012 when a request was put to her office to investigate allegations of systematic looting of the collective resources of the community, including funds held in the “D Account” – into which companies pay royalties to communities whose ancestral land they mine.

There is also that aching problem of the Apartheid Reserve Bank that seemed to have been used as a personal bank of the likes of the Ruperts, with billions of rand in bailouts that remain unpaid. Did she just not have the appetite to do preliminary checks on those matters? Some may say Thuli rocketed to national fame on the promise that there should be no more incidences like these.

But expectations of Thuli degenerated into a sense of petulance. You started to get a sense that some felt they had to get something out of her, even if they may not know what that even is. Regardless of what Thuli did, regardless of which matters she would have decided to pursue and which ones she would have decided to defer, an active Public Protector was always going to be a lightning rod for political polarisation, because clearly, our racial unity has been exposed as a unity of convenience.

For the last 22 years there has been this nagging feeling that certain influential quarters in our country have never come to terms with a black president, and if the past presidents have managed to punch holes into such demagogue, such coming to terms has become ever so elusive with the current administration and Thuli has found herself in the middle of it all. Thuli’s investigations seemed to anchor those who have long refused to recognise a black president as the legitimate holder of this crucial office. There may well be something to be said about this.

But Thuli’s work went way beyond race. In all sorts of ways, Thuli embodied the anxieties of a section of a certain subgroup of the ANC. She was an advocate, very African, very intelligent, who did not find the blood and tears Black people went through and all that they had to overcome to be free a reason to give them a pass on high standards of good governance.

Thuli came into office when being an ANC leader no longer means what it used to. Thuli became a proxy for those who could not accept that being an ANC leader was a life sentence to sacrifice, and in the end her presence became both a threat and a humiliation.

While in a true sense, the ANC should have stood as an example and an enabler to Thuli of just what it means to Protect the Public, with everything you’ve got, what became of her relationship with the ANC was rancour and suspicion which only got worse instead of better.

There is no doubt that a better relationship between the ANC and the Public Protector will strengthen both Luthuli House and the Public Protector’s office because in a genuine sense, both these offices must do everything they have to protect the public. The only way for this to happen is if both these offices do just that, protect the public with everything they have.

Members of the ANC themselves on any given day consider themselves as public protectors. You would hear one member saying “I’m exhausted”, “I’m exhausted of defending my own party, defending this administration, defending the party I voted for, and deeply disappointed with where we are right now.”

The challenge for the next Public Protector, Busisiwe Joyce Mkhwebane, is not for herself, it’s for the ANC. The ANC must set the standard for the public protector, and must stand as her guide and anchor, so that the ANC can also have the moral authority to rebuke her when she has done wrong. DM

Yonela Diko is ANC Western Cape spokesman.

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