Rhoda Kadalie is a tell-it-like-she-sees-it kind of person

Although Kadalie describes herself as a political animal, and admits to having been approached umpteen times to enter public life, she turned her back on that route. Her reason? “I have seen politics ruin some of the best of my friends. They became corrupt, unaccountable, haughty – and useless.”

She has become well known as an “insider critic”, but also one who likes to showcase the good that comes out of the public sector.

Kadalie’s irresistible columns in Business Day, Die Burger and Beeld bear witness to her innate readiness to unsettle and unmask all that she regards as unjust, inefficient, lazy or simply ridiculous. Yet, sitting opposite this petite, 50-something bundle of energy on a cool morning in May, one suspects her opinionated, fearless state of being has come at a price, and not necessarily in the monetary sense of the word.

In 1998, by her own admission, she walked away from the gravy train when she gave up a “fat pay cheque” as a commissioner at the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC).

Kadalie simply could not countenance the way in which the SAHRC’s commissioners kowtowed to the government while collecting overblown salaries. She quips, with a hint of ruefulness: “If I’d stayed, my house would have been paid off long ago. But I said to myself, I’d rather be poor!”

In relation to the recent sad passing of Dr Frederik van Zyl Slabbert, she says with indignation: “Our country spurns people who are intelligent, talented and want to serve.

We need people in government who have the courage to stand up and tackle the things that destroy people.”

She adds: “But Helen Zille gives one hope. She is uncorrupt, hardworking and extremely astute.”

Referring to the current state of politics in this country, Kadalie quotes Socrates: “People are likely to resist self-examination unless they surround themselves with those who dare to challenge their thoughts.”

Chairing a discussion at the recent Franschhoek Literary Festival, she began by asking: “Who’s afraid of the ANC? The ANC is afraid of the ANC,” was her answer, adding, “And if we aren’t afraid of the ANC, then we should be! They can’t control the demons they have created. The intolerance they display towards their own is going to backfire on them.”

Kadalie maintains that the party is hoist by its own petard.

She laments the level of debate in Parliament.

“When serious issues come up for discussion, people get up and dance when they should be listening and applying their minds.”

Kadalie would like to help groom young people to go into politics; to teach them to respect parliament and its institutions. “Look at Julius Malema!”, she exclaims. “He is living proof that our education system has failed.

“Today, we have a brainless bunch of young people who shout, and get bankrolled by BEE in order to give the vote to the ruling party. That is populism at its worst – the worst legacy for our young people.”

Kadalie believes that young people, such as those in the ANC Youth League (ANCYL), are being used as “lightning rods”. Their role seems to be to make increasingly militant sounds. They make controversial statements to measure the pulse of the reaction of the nation.

“It is a constant game, a war of nerves that they play with the nation vis-à-vis their support base.

“The ANC governs with forked tongue.”

She continues: “These kids are held up as leaders when the majority of the young people in our country are unemployed. For now, the ruling party just wants their vote. It is therefore important to keep the ANCYL undivided.

“They [ANC] know the succession battle is going to be a fierce one, and they need the Youth League. So they allow Malema to go on. But as soon as he has served his purpose at the polls, he – like other useful idiots before him – will be rewarded with a cushy job, never to be heard of again,” she adds.

Kadalie is scathing about the women in government. “They have betrayed us. They supported a president who denied that HIV causes Aids, and what is happening today? The majority of our young women are being ravaged by HIV/Aids.

“The ANC government is responsible for depopulating South Africa of its economically active young women.

“At the same time, those women in the Cabinet have ratified and signed the Beijing Platform for Action, which provides for the advancement of the girl child. It is not implemented here. It’s all verbiage, hollow words. And I am offended by the women in government,” she says.

In 1999, Kadalie set up the Gender Equity Unit at the University of Western Cape. The driving force was for women to be fully autonomous citizens in public life and discourse of our democracy. “I see the ‘products’ everywhere in the country,” she says. These are powerful women whom she mentored and who are now working successfully in major organisations.

When asked how women can make a difference in public life, Kadalie says: “Women’s role in public life is to unite around gender
interests above party loyalties, across the board of women’s causes. For instance, women in government should form solid relationships with women in civil society because they can’t do everything by themselves. Proportional representation is important, but not at the expense of being accountable to one’s constituency.

“Women in parliament should be responsible – accountable to the Constitution, not just beholden to the party that appoints them. Women should write submissions to parliament, take up class actions and fight wrongs in court. They should be vigilant watchdogs.”

Kadalie has become known – perhaps even feared in some circles – as a no-nonsense, tell-it-like-she-sees-it kind of person, with a passionate proponent for critical and independent thought. She is a woman without an agenda, who gives credit to her parents in becoming the person she is today.

“I was one of nine children, born of parents who were affected by displacement. I was in my Matric year when my family was forcibly removed from Mowbray in the Cape,” she says.

“We are a family of free spirits, all totally independent. I had the freedom to assert myself in a household dominated by boys from an early age.”

The daughter of a pastor, Christian values – particularly that of respect, and not only for one’s own religion – were inculcated at an early stage. But Kadalie mentions in one of her columns, recently published as a compilation, aptly titled “In your face – Passionate Conversations about People and Politics”, that she cannot bear people who quote the Bible out of context in order to make a point.

She calls her parents, still alive and important in her life today, “not a traditional couple”. There were no stereotypical roles in their family.

Her mother, a housewife, was a powerful woman. She often used to say: “I am nobody’s slave.”

Clearly, this background set the tone for Kadalie’s activist role; she is the granddaughter of one of the first black trade unionists in South Africa. Her tertiary education concerned anthropology, a direction that further prepared her for her future involvement with, among others, humanitarian issues at the Impumelelo Innovations Awards Trust.

In 1999 she started Impumelelo, based in Cape Town, as executive director. The Trust is funded by the Ford Foundation, the Open Society Foundation for South Africa, and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. It came into being to award public-private initiatives that distinguish themselves as innovative and replicable models of public service delivery. Every two years, awards are made to projects that have excelled at their aims.

“We excavate models for best practice”, states Kadalie, and this year Impumelelo raised nearly R1 million and 27 awards were made.

“We are five people doing the work of 20,” she says.

One of the Trust’s main aims is to promote and reward good governance. The fields include education, skills development, environment, social development, social welfare, criminal justice, governance, land reform, housing, arts and culture and HIV/Aids.

Kadalie’s gaze is intense when she expands on the excellent work that has been done, particularly in the latter field. It has been estimated that there are three million Aids orphans in South Africa. She has encountered households run by 11-year-old girls.

There is no room in Kadalie’s frame of reference for discrimination along racial lines. Any job well done deserves her praise. She singles out the Etafeni Project run by a plucky white woman, Stephanie Kilroe, in the Western Cape; and Mothers2Mothers run by Dr Mitch Besser, whose counsellors in this programme provide health education and counselling at day hospitals and clinics in Khayelitsha, Gugulethu, Nyanga, Mitchells Plain and the Central Health District.

Kadalie says that Kilroe is the only person she knows who drives her car unlocked and with open windows in the townships. “Something I wouldn’t do!”, she adds.

She mentions a literacy project, Run Home to Read, where mothers and children are taught to read at the same time. Then there is an eye- and home care project in Grahamstown where optometry services are provided for the poorest of the poor. “A 90-year-old man was recently given spectacles, which enabled him to see his daughter for the first time in 30 years,” says Kadalie.

She tells of a situation in the Eastern Cape, where schools reported an alarming rate of absenteeism among teenage girls. Upon examination, it was found that the girls stayed away during menstruation because they or their parents simply could not afford sanitary towels.

One of the projects that functions with the help of Impumelelo was able to get a corporate sponsor to provide sanitary towels. This significant gesture and other changes, brought about with the help of the project, have caused the attendance rate to increase to 90%. “Simple things, obvious things”, Kadalie claims, eyes blazing, “can make all the difference.”

Similar award trust programmes are run in countries such as the United States, China, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Kenya and the Philippines – all sponsored by the Ford Foundation. South Africa was the fifth country to join, but Kadalie states proudly that Impumelelo has become the leader of the pack in that every year, South Africa’s Impumelelo award-winners walk off with the laurels at the United Nations.

She has received honorary doctorates from the University of Uppsala, Sweden and her alma mater, the University of the Western Cape, and recently from the University of Stellenbosch. She is also the recipient of the Human Rights Award, Toronto, Canada, and the Rapport and City Press Prestige Award for Inspirational Women.

Kadalie serves on a number of Boards, including those of the South African Institute of Race Relations, the Ethics Institute of South Africa and the Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University in the US.

She has strong views on leadership: “I believe a good leader empowers people to such an extent that ultimately they are able to take over the reins without disruption of the organisation or operation.”

Clearly, Kadalie has passed on many of her talents to her only child, a Harvard graduate living in Washington, DC who works for a think tank on Capitol Hill. “Julia is an expert on President [Barack] Obama’s defence policy. At 23, she has become so powerful – I sometimes ask her advice,” she says, looking every inch the proud mother.

Kadalie relaxes with a good book whenever she can and likes to listen to opera; “The Prayer” from Bellini’s Tosca is her favourite aria.

She ended our interview with an anecdote of a recent visit to Ceres with Marlene le Roux, director of Audience Development and Education at the Artscape Theatre Centre. The local community was treated to a selection of popular operatic arias. During one of the highlights, she heard a small voice behind her exclaiming: “Maar dis mos Figaro daai!” When she turned, she discovered that a little child had uttered those words.

“I realised there and then: this is how I would like to enjoy my opera in future – with the people! ▲

Estelle Neethling