Next president should unify SA - Thuli
THE next South African president should work towards bringing the people together.
This is according to former public protector Thuli Madonsela who addressed the Cape Town Press Club yesterday.
She was asked to weigh in on the presidential race as the ANC heads towards its elective conference at the end of the year.
She said she was “neither qualified to be president nor interested in that job” but hoped the next president would work to bring South Africans together.
Madonsela said she felt that white people should not be treated like “Cinderellas” but, at the same time, the new president would have to focus on redistribution and growth.
“As long as the face of poverty is black and a woman and the face of wealth is white and male, that is a recipe for disaster.”
She said she would love the next president to be a woman but
“I would hate to have a female that is a proxy for a man because that would be worse than having a man”.
Madonsela added that some information she uncovered during the State of Capture report investigation got her “really worried” and questioned who was running the country.
She said without the commission of inquiry she recommended, the trust deficit between the government and the public created by state capture would continue to grow.
Madonsela said she felt that because the issue of state capture by the Gupta family was such a “highly charged matter both politically and emotionally”, it needed a transparent, open process.
Questioned about who really runs the country she said: “Officially, we know that we have a government but if we don’t get a commission of inquiry, there will always be a trust deficit.
“Some of the information I gathered made me really worried about who runs the country.”
Madonsela said “it may well be” that whistleblowers Deputy Minister of Finance Mcebisi Jonas, Vytjie Mentor and Themba Maseko were “lying” but,
“The information I gathered got me really worried
without an inquiry, the country would never know.
Madonsela said she had also noticed how the use of the phrase “white monopoly capital” had started to flourish in the wake of her report and said she had read how governments in Africa “whip up ethnicity as an issue”.
But, she said, “the answer to white monopoly capital is not having two families enriching themselves through state resources.”
Madonsela also refused to be drawn on whether her report into the Absa “lifeboat” money had been altered.
She said she had “views” on the issue but would not comment publicly.
A draft of the report was leaked and published in the Mail & Guardian newspaper last week.
She also refused to comment on the findings made in the final report but said that when released, it should be dealt with “with a cool head” and “without vilifying people”.