‘Stand for president!’ Dlamini-Zuma tells SA women

Though South African voters may be ready for a woman president, the country’s political parties are not. This is the view of former cabinet minister and senior ANC leader Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma. She said women candidates in intraparty leadership contests tend to have little financial support for their campaigns, giving their male counterparts a huge advantage. In a wide-ranging interview with the Sunday Times, Dlamini-Zuma said even though faced with such hurdles, it was important for women in politics to continue “rocking the boat” and “claim our space”.

“I think we should not shy away from rocking the boat and we should claim our space because if we don’t... the younger people will never be able to do so because they have no role models. They don’t know that you can stand for this position. Even if we don’t win, we should still claim that space because we have the right to do so. We are as good as anyone, sometimes better,” Dlamini-Zuma said.

The recently retired minister, who has held portfolios such as health, foreign affairs and women & youth in the national executive, is the only woman politician to come close to becoming the country’s head of state.

In 2007, during the leadership battle between then ANC president Thabo Mbeki and his then deputy Jacob Zuma, Dlamini-Zuma stood on the Mbeki ticket as a candidate for deputy president. Had their slate won, she would have been a shoo-in to succeed Mbeki — who was constitutionally barred from running for a third term as head of state — two years later as the country’s president.

However, they lost to the Zuma camp, with Kgalema Motlanthe becoming the ANC deputy president. Ten years later, after serving as the chairperson of the AU Commission, Dlamini-Zuma was back, this time putting her name forward for the ANC presidency. She had the backing of the then outgoing ANC president, and her former husband, Jacob Zuma. She ran against Cyril Ramaphosa and lost by 179 votes.

Perhaps it was her association with Zuma that cost her the race, but others say she was on her way to winning until David Mabuza, who was on her slate running for the deputy presidency, switched sides and convinced Mpumalanga delegates to vote for Ramaphosa. There is also an argument, which she clearly believes, that money played a huge role in swaying the way people voted.

During the interview more than a week ago, the 75-year-old Dlamini-Zuma spoke passionately about women leadership in politics. She said society was ready to be led by women, but a stumbling block was the political parties — and not just the ANC.

“I think society may be willing to embrace women to lead because a few that lead, society is accepting us and we work. But whether political parties are ready to be led by women is another story. You know in our system you have to be elected by your party and maybe eventually you can then lead government and then lead the country. I’m not sure if political parties are ready... If you look at us in the world, we are not at 50% [gender representation] because it’s only the ANC that has 50%, the other parties have less. So that takes the average down to less than 50%.”

Of all the major parties that contested last May’s elections, only one, Patricia de Lille’s Good Party, put up a woman as its presidential candidate.

Dlamini-Zuma says the scales are tilted against women in intraparty leadership contests. Even her own campaign in 2017 suffered because Ramaphosa had the upper hand — including deeper pockets.

“There wasn’t a big gap between the winner [Ramaphosa] and myself... the factors for those who didn’t vote [for me] maybe you should ask them. I wouldn’t know why they didn’t vote for me. But I’m sure you would have read... heard people talk about... also money... because that is also the disadvantage with women, they tend not to have money for campaigns. I suppose because not many women are rich anyway to be able to fund [campaigns].”

Reports at the time, however, indicated that her campaign had a war chest, with some of the funds allegedly coming from various controversial characters, including cigarette smugglers.

I think society may be willing to embrace women to lead because a few that lead, society is accepting us and we work. But whether political parties are ready to be led by women is another story

Dlamini-Zuma was one of the longest-serving ministers when she announced her retirement from parliament and the cabinet ahead of the May elections. In our interview, however, she emphasised that her leaving government did not mean she had retired from politics.

Does that mean that she is still hoping for another shot at the ANC presidency? Dlamini-Zuma refused to say.

Her political activism dates back to her youth as a student at Adams College, a mission school in KwaZulu-Natal. “When I was at Adams, that is when I decided definitely I was going to join the struggle. There were a few incidents that defined that for me. One incident, there were white and African teachers. But they didn’t drink tea together. The black teachers had their own tea room downstairs and the white teachers had their own tea room upstairs. So that in itself was a problem.”

She said one day a white teacher smashed a cup because it had been used by a black teacher — so that it could never be used by a white teacher. “Now that said to me something is drastically wrong in this country.”

Another incident that convinced her to join the struggle was they were given a day off when apartheid architect and former prime minister Hendrik Verwoerd was killed, but this did not happen when ANC president Albert Luthuli — who had been a teacher at the school — died.

This inspired her to join the South African Students’ Organisation when she arrived at the University of Zululand. Dlamini-Zuma rose through the ranks to the position of vice-president. While at medical school, she linked up with the ANC underground and interacted with leaders such as Thabo Mbeki and S’bu Ndebele, who were based in Swaziland. Ndebele had been acting as a courier — moving between South Africa and Swaziland. When he was arrested, Dlamini-Zuma had to skip the country through Botswana.

She was sent to several countries, including Ethiopia, Ghana, and the Czech Republic, before ending up in the UK, where she finished her medical degree at Bristol University. Dlamini-Zuma was one of the first exiles to return to the country in the early 1990s when the ANC was unbanned.

On her return she found her home province of KwaZulu-Natal engulfed in violence between the ANC and the IFP.

“My first port of call was supposed to be baba Harry Gwala’s place. So I landed in Durban, I was picked up by Makhosi Khoza — who was an ANC cadre — and an Anglican priest who was driving the car. I came with my youngest daughter [Thuthukile] because she was still breastfeeding. So we drove from Durban to Pietermaritzburg.

“When we were at Edendale, just ahead of us we saw a number of men — five or six — carrying rifles. We couldn’t see... whether they were AKs or R5s. And then the driver said we don’t stop, ‘I’m just going to go at them full speed’, which he did. They saw that he is not going to stop, he’s going to run them over, so they moved. But one of them shot at the car. Fortunately, the bullet didn’t hit any of us. So it was my first experience. When we got to baba Gwala’s house and we related the story, he said, ‘Well, that’s what you’re going to experience every day’.”

Dlamini-Zuma and other women in the ANC fought many struggles after that, including pushing for 30% women representation at the ANC national conference in 1991 in Durban. They lost the debate. They then took their fight to the Codesa negotiations, where they fought for women to have a place at the negotiating table. This was followed by a struggle for a third of ANC parliamentarians to be women.

“Of course, I was really surprised when president Mandela asked me to be minister of health. I knew the health policy because I had a part in drafting it. But I didn’t expect that I would be asked to be minister.” 

Dlamini-Zuma’s name was on the lists of candidates for parliament and the provincial legislature. But because she wanted to be with her young children, she had chosen the provincial list that would have seen her remain in KZN. “But president Mandela said no, he wants me to be minister of health. So I had to go to the national parliament. And, of course, I couldn’t say to him my kids are young — he spent 27 years in prison without his kids.”

In the health portfolio, Dlamini-Zuma led the process of amalgamating the various health departments, including those from the homelands, into one department of health. During that time she also spearheaded legislation to ban public smoking, as well as a policy that led to medical aid members being able to add their parents as dependants. But controversy also followed her.

In 1995, she was accused of awarding a R14m tender to late playwright Mbongeni Ngema to produce the HIV/Aids awareness play Sarafina 2 — without following tender processes. She voluntarily addresses the matter during the interview, saying that an investigation by the Special Investigating Unit — then headed by judge Willem Heath — had cleared her.

“Heath didn’t conclude the matter, it kept popping up. Until I took the matter to court myself to interdict Heath to say he must come out with a verdict. If I’m guilty, he should say I’m guilty. If I’m not guilty, he should say I’m not guilty... and he just said no, he had no case... that is how it was concluded. Many people don’t know because the media that was making it a headline, when he said there was no case it was maybe page five or somewhere.”

She went on to other portfolios, such as home affairs, foreign affairs, and co-operative governance & traditional affairs. She also had a stint as chairperson of the AU Commission. Her last cabinet job was as minister in the presidency responsible for women, youth & people with disabilities.

Asked again whether she will have another go at the ANC presidency, Dlamini-Zuma responded: “I said women [should keep trying]. Why are you personalising it?”