KEEPER OF THE FLAME THULI MADONSELA Time magazine identified Thuli Madonsela as one of the world’s one hundred most influential people in 2014, and Forbes magazine named her Forbes Africa ‘Person of the year’ in 2016.
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MYD: Beautiful, but it also comes with its hardships. There is a difficult process involved and obviously dealing with unethical practices must be extremely frustrating. What is your take on ethical leadership? TM: Firstly, with enormous power, there is enormous responsibility. Ethical leadership is a must for everyone who exercises entrusted power, whether it is in the private sector or in government. In government, in fact, it’s stated in black and white: Section 195 of the Constitution of South Africa makes it compulsory for everyone who works for the State to implement the highest level of professional ethics. Entrusted power has to be exercised in terms of the rules and values that are the basis of your being given that power. If you act in breach of those rules, trust will be broken and people’s lives will be undermined, but more than anything else, public peace will be compromised.
fter the first democratic elections in South Africa, Thuli helped draft the country’s final constitution promulgated by then President Nelson Mandela. She went on to become the third South African Public Protector and the first woman to occupy this position until her term of office ended in October 2016. Her relentless fight for justice – in the face of personal adversity and even death threats – has made her an international icon of integrity and faith in Africa. MYD spoke to her in 2016 about her role as Public Protector. MYD: You’ve been an inspiration to so many women around Africa. What has it been like for you? TM: It has been a blast really. Yes, my team and I have done our best because we have a job to do. We have to find out what happened, what should have happened, if there is a discrepancy, how to restore a situation to normalcy. It is a kind of restorative justice and, in the process, we have attracted a bit of flack, but we have also attracted a lot of gratitude and a lot of support, and if I were to weigh the negative reaction we have received up against the positive reaction we have received, I would say that the positive negates the negative.
MYD: What do you think is necessary in our African path to peace? TM: I think part of the African path to peace is recognising injustices of the past, embracing that pain and then letting go of it. That is the first part of the way to peace in Africa. We’ve got to recognise it was cruel and then let go of it, but we then need to ensure that in our day-to-day practices we promote social justice, and deal with the conflicts generated by destitution, hunger and poverty. They say a hungry person is an angry person. I’m not suggesting people should be angry, because anger corrodes the soul that holds it more than it affects their object of the anger. But because of a sense of injustice, a sense of unfairness, the reality of abject poverty in the face of growing inequality and the rich getting richer, people feel so angry. When it comes to those of us who are employed by the State, we come from those poor communities. If they see me rocking up in my four-by-four and dressed up to the nines when their last meal was three days ago, it is very stressful for them. But I would say we have to work on that anger. I would like to harvest that anger and channel it towards problem-solving because, as I have said, it corrodes the soul. Anger can be harnessed to say okay, this has happened, how do we seek justice in a constructive way and, more than anything else, how do we improve our fortunes?
MYD: What drove you to stand up and speak out against injustice? TM: It really has all been about gratitude. The gratitude of being placed in this position of enormous responsibility, where I can make a difference in people’s lives. Every day you meet ordinary people, the Joe Soaps – in South Africa we call them the ‘Gogo Dlaminis’ or ‘Granny Dlaminis’ – who would have been victims of the abuse of power or abuse of State resources in one way or another, or just bad administration, and we restore hope and dignity to those people. That gives me enormous joy. I was telling a meeting today that yesterday I got feedback that two startup business people had got their money paid by government. It had been a long struggle; they had lost everything. Just hearing the story, that the money had been paid, I jumped for joy. Everyone makes a difference in the work they do, but not everyone is as lucky as we are to see the impact of our work every day.
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