All eyes on a woman who takes it to the max
People are asking questions about Makhosi Khoza. She has sprung like a clear-eyed phoenix from the ashes of a corruption-riddled ruling party and everyone wants to know: who is this woman?
The whispering began roughly a year ago, when Khoza chaired the ad hoc committee charged with appointing a new public protector. Her fairness and fearlessness sparked a storm of attention.
More recently, her open support of the vote of no confidence in Jacob Zuma’s presidency made headlines. At a Future of South Africa conference on Mandela Day, Khoza said Zuma had lost “legitimacy‚ credibility‚ integrity and honour”.
The KwaZulu-Natal branch of the ANC, to which she reports as an MP, said her speech “represented the worst form of arrogance”. But there is a vast difference between arrogant — defined as “a manifest feeling of superiority combined with contempt of others” — and opinionated, which is simply a refusal to let go of a strongly held opinion. And Khoza makes no apologies for being opinionated.
Fellow party members have rejected and vilified her. On Thursday she was fired as chairwoman of parliament’s public service and administration portfolio committee. Next month she will face a disciplinary hearing in KwaZulu-Natal which might see her expelled from the party (she refuses to resign). She and her children have received death threats. Despite all this, she will not back down or compromise.
These are the things people are talking about. But Khoza’s crusade for justice began a long time ago and her credentials are legion — an entrepreneur from the age of seven, a youth leader by the time she was 12, arrested at 14 for giving a revolutionary speech, a deputy mayor at 26, widowed with two small children at 28.
Now 46, Khoza has a master’s degree in policy and development, a doctorate in administration, and is working towards a second master’s in finance. Between political appointments she has been a director in the corporate sector. She has also written a linguistic textbook that teaches isiZulu via numerical equations.
Neither the published facts nor her TV appearances are adequate preparation for meeting Khoza. She practically glows with an energy that has in it something of the young Tina Turner. It is easy to imagine her belting out an anthem and laughing in delight as the audience joins in. As it turns out, Khoza loves to sing and as a child she loved to act. These skills are evident in her articulate delivery and her ability to hold listeners spellbound.
The arrogance of which she has been accused is markedly absent.
Sipping a fruit smoothie (“me and these things”) in the sun in Cape Town’s Dunkley Square, Khoza laughs often and easily. No one watching — and all eyes are drawn to her — would suspect that this vibrant woman has been going through hell.
She is interrupted by passers-by who shyly approach to shake her hand and thank her for “standing up for South Africa”, as one puts it. Khoza responds with a dazzling smile and a gracious word.
Whatever the subject, Khoza gives it the full force of her energy. She is particularly impassioned when talking of her language project. “Inasmuch as language was used to divide us, I think we can unite people using language. I am going to revolutionise isiZulu.”
In a brief impromptu lesson, she points out that adding the suffix isisa to any word in isiZulu means “to intensify the action, do it thoroughly, do it properly”.
It does not take long to see that Khoza has only one mode of operating: she does things thoroughly, properly, and with ever more intensity. Whatever she puts her heart to, she is always isisa.