Durban - South Africa has always been ready to have a woman as president, but Public Protector Thuli Madonsela said she herself was not volunteering for the country’s top job.
Speaking at a public lecture at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban to celebrate Woman’s Month, Madonsela was asked during a question-and-answer session if she would consider putting herself forward as a candidate for the country’s top office.
“Am I ready to be president? No, I am not even ready to be a politician,” she replied.
“For me, I don’t want a woman president or a man president. I want a president who will expand the frontiers of freedom, justice and constitutionalism in this country.”
Madonsela paid tribute to the women of the country, but said that while attention was paid to the women of 1956 who had staged the march on the Union Buildings to protest the injustices of apartheid, other heroes from other eras should not be forgotten.
She said that most of the Public Protector’s workload usually involved single people who believed that they had been wronged by the state, but did not have the means to challenge the state. She made the point that it was not always the role of the Public Protector to be antagonistic towards the state.
“We call ourselves the conscience of the state. We are not anti-state. We work with the government to see, to collectively identify the circumstances that have led to ball-dropping. And sometimes it is not anyone intentionally being a ball-dropper. It drops with our best intentions, especially when it comes to managing diversity.”
ANA