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No one is likely to have paid any attention to an assistant teacher answering to the name Thulisile Nomkhosi Mandonsela at an equally nondescript school, Evelyn Baring High, some 32 years ago. 

Does anybody call you by that other name? “No. Only my father used to call me Nomkhosi.” And this happened only when her old man “was in a good mood”. 

Feeding the name of the school into a GPS console now is likely to prove more challenging and give the hackneyed phrase “looking for a needle in a haystack” a whole new meaning. 
She continued to sail under the radar even when she moved to the more excitable Naledi High School in Soweto.
 
“I wanted to study law but my pastor had persuaded my mother that it was not a noble career. When I later persuaded my mother that I really wanted to study law, they did not have a place for me in that programme. The first degree I enrolled for was a BA in humanities, which principally prepares you to teach.” 

Did anyone really give a hoot when, just after the end of apartheid, she knuckled down together with 11 other technical experts to help draft the final Constitution, a period she describes as “the best time of my life”?

Maybe no one still did but everyone sure made note when her (first) given name, now shortened to its nickname form, became synonymous with anti-graft. 

As Public Protector, advocate Thuli Madonsela has given the office a lot of chutzpah, having succeeded a docile (ruling) party apparatchik, another advocate, Lawrence Mushwana. Selby Baqwa, a decorated lawyer and a gentleman, was failed by his soft nature to make miscreants sit up and listen. 
Unlike Mushwana, Madonsela came into the post three years ago unencumbered by party political allegiances. 

But she thinks highly of Mushwana and Baqwa: “My predecessors did a good job in laying the foundation that has allowed me to take the office to higher ground. Virtually all the key investigators are part of the legacy of my predecessors.
 
“Perhaps the difference is that we are now placing a lot more emphasis on the constitutional injunction to be accessible to all persons and communities. We are also a little bolder on remedial action in the belief that when the Constitution says ‘take appropriate remedial action’, it means that people who elect to seek justice through my office rather than the complex expensive court do indeed get justice and not ‘a gate to nowhere’.
 
“We’re also increasingly stretching ourselves a little more when it comes to finding the truth in order to tell it as we see it as opposed to telling what some persons in organs of state choose to let us see. 

“Knowing we may be taken to a court of law as happened in the Mail & Guardian case and a court of public opinion, as has happened in many of our recent findings, helps keep us in check regarding the rigour of our investigations.” 

She is, as you read this, perhaps the only face of the post-apartheid government, after maybe Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, that even the opposition DA has faith in. 

Their shadow minister of defence David Maynier was merely showing the party’s vote of confidence in the work of Madonsela when he referred his gripe to her over the irregular appointment of Paul Ngobeni as special adviser to former Defence Minister LindiweSisulu, who has now been moved to Public Service and Administration. 
Madonsela found the vetting process that Ngobeni was subjected to by military intelligence to be porous if not outright laughable. How they could have missed that he was a fugitive from US law where he was charged with ethical misconduct in Connecticut remains a mystery. 
It is not an indictment on her predecessors but it is doubtful that they could have arrived at the same findings as the workaholic Madonsela. 

With her, there are no holy cows, taking to task everyone from the high and mighty like former national police commissioner General Bheki Cele to those in the lower rungs, like the authorities at Chris Hani-Baragwanath Hospital for refusing to disclose the cause of death of a patient. 

She is the only person in public office who is prepared to forego the perks of her job and point out the obvious hard truths – as in Jimmy Manyi’s case. When everyone else chooses to bury their head in the sand and not see his dual role as GCIS head and BMF president as a glaring conflict of interest, Madonsela will tell it as it is.

Her services are free, thereby disproving the popular myth that the law is only for those with deep pockets. It does not matter whether it is a school, like Milnerton High that refuses to admit a pupil or a government department, like Water and Environment Affairs, that miscalculates the leave days of employees, Madonsela will investigate – and provide redress. 

A home owner could approach her office and find joy in the fact that she’d probe – and get to the bottom of the issue – why a municipality, Theewaterskloof in this case, should carry blame or not for the damage to household electrical appliances after a power surge. 
“Many of the cases that seem small by global standards are the difficult ones as they often involve interpretation of the law.” 
She cites an example: “I consider a case regarding the CCMA’s power to directly accredit and therefore effectively chose members of a bargaining council and the justness of action taken by the CCMA is one of the most difficult and painful cases I have ever dealt with. The matter was compounded by the fact that the person died before the implementation of my findings. Then there’s the case of a bright young man who, having received a university scholarship, had to forfeit it and wait for an ID for five years. Now seven years down the line his matric results cannot be found and no one is willing to take responsibility.”
 
In the unhurried and soft manner of one who is confident she knows what she’s doing, Madonsela has been able to expose lies and get the culprits to account. 

One case that has probably catapulted her to the status of nemesis of the crooked is the matter of the flagrant abuse of taxpayers’ money by the late Sicelo Shiceka, the sickly and beleaguered Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs in the latter days of his life. 
She found that Shiceka had lied about the reasons for his unscheduled trip to Switzerland where he visited a prison inmate. 

Her report on the matter is a comedy of errors that makes for fascinating reading. 

She called on President Jacob Zuma to act against Shiceka, who was seen as an untouchable of some sort by virtue of his support for the president. 

It is a matter of public record that Zuma fired the man.


The ill-fated SAPS headquarters’ lease in Durban and Pretoria that ultimately saw to the demise of the once powerful and flamboyant Cele was a scary assignment. Was it not?
 
“From my side the ‘Against the Rules Investigation’ was another assignment. We also did not expect to find what we found and that is the case in many of our investigations. Regarding security, my family is often concerned, especially my brother.” 
But the contentious SAPS lease is yet another finding that shines the light particularly brightly on the work of this hardworking woman. 

A little smear campaign that followed to discredit her lasted as long as candle flame in gusting wind. 

To paraphrase, Madonsela has proved worthy of throwing stones because she does not live in a glass house. 

When her 23-year-old son Wanda crashed her state-issue BMW X6 into the wall of a Pretoria residence, Madonsela did the unthinkable in South ��һ�Թ��� high office – she readily owned up and took responsibility. 

She was nowhere near that car when Wanda, a grown man, allegedly swerved to avoid hitting a dog and rammed into the wall. 

Her CV does not say where she acquired her honours for honesty and integrity but her office, whose envisioned values include human dignity, redress, transparency, fairness and justice can only find expression in a person like her, clean as a whistle. 

A Joburg girl, from Dhlamini 2, Soweto, Madonsela has come a long way from her days as national organiser for a trade union. She returned to her alma mater, Wits University, for two years to lecture in law. 
She’d still love to teach, she says, but life after the Public Protector’s office is already bespoken. 

“Writing will be my first priority – for at least a year. Going back to academia will be next and possibly combining it with selective constitutional litigation and legal advice focusing on human rights, including equality and administrative justice, is a sure thing.” 
Being the Public Protector has given her a highly recognisable face, she admits. She doesn’t mind bumping into total strangers who seek her help – on the spot. 
 
And if you thought this demanding job was the highlight of her career, you have another think coming: “Helping a group of young men from Bekkersdal get out of death row was the highlight of my career as a young law student.”

Madonsela will address The New Age Business Breakfast tomorrow. To book, go to www.thenewage.co.za             

donm@thenewage.co.za

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