Righteous Khoza for Speaker

ONE COULD not help but be impressed by the chairing skills of Dr Makhosi Busisiwe Khoza during the public protector adhoc committee hearings which eventually nominated her namesake, advocate Busisiwe Mkhwebane.

Khoza is one of the few shining lights among the ANC parliamentarians who could replace as national Speaker our bumbling Baleka Mbete.

Khoza is very well qualified, academically and intellectually. She also has invaluable management experience. Her personal attributes and leadership qualities were evident to all except the jaundiced in the recent ad hoc hearings; her moral gravitas, irreproachable.

She was able to banter with EFF supremos Floyd Shivambu and Julius Malema with an effortless ease that is lacking in the ANC parliamentary hierarchy.

Regardless of the fact that in 2011 she succumbed to threats from dangerous buffoons and withdrew her candidacy for the position of eThekwini municipal manager and despite her quarrels with the IFP leader Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi, Khoza could still be a more effective Parliament Speaker than either Mbete or her counterpart in the National Council of Provinces, Thandi Modise.

The ANC needs better qualified and younger skilled leaders with strong moral qualities than the current crop or else they are in for a torrid time with youthful DA and EFF members who are more energetic and intellectually savvy. The era of polemical invective and political epithets no longer carries weight.

Only the dead wood would still employ such tactics. Centurion, Tshwane