Do we Need a Female President?

Do we need a female president?  I would only want a woman president whose party reflected the ideological commitments that would see a real transformation of society. She would have to be a feminist  – someone who understood that society can never be free unless women are free from subordination and oppression in their homes and in their workplace and who promoted full gender equality. A woman would understand that No means No. Of course, if there was a man who really believed in this vision, I would support his leadership.

Sadly, though,  women are not necessarily by their nature either good or more fit than men to rule. Women can be as elitist, racist, corrupt and greedy as men. Nor are all women feminists.

Thus to ask if we need a female president in South Africa is perhaps to ask the wrong question. It might be more useful to ask – what kind of president does South Africa need at this point in time? What characteristics should a president possess? Integrity, honesty, commitment to the needs and interests of South Africa’s people, especially the poor, over and above their own sectional or personal interests.

In whatever way we might answer this question, it would not be in terms of the race, the ethnic identity, the home language, the culture or even the gender of the presidential candidate, though both the first and the last are seen as significant in South Africa. The first, race, seems to be accepted only in the ANC as a required qualification to rule because of our history of racial discrimination. A sine qua non for the ANC is that the president of the country should be an indigenous African black person. Thus there can be no conversation about ‘other’ black people, who might be better candidates.
The last, gender, was certainly raised in the context of the leadership challenge in the ANC in 2007.  But the Women’s League put paid to any debate by supporting Zuma. This was a pity, as it foreclosed an opportunity to seek out, identify and promote a woman leader in a similar way to the packaging of Zuma.

Who knows, we might have seen the emergence from the shadows of Nozizwe Madlala Routledge, or even Barbara Hogan. Both are brave, intelligent, articulate and above all, honest.  A pity that the ANC didn’t see either as an alternative to the sexism and prebendalism of the existing leadership.

There is no shortage of competent, capable and strong women leaders either in the ANC or the opposition political parties. Although neither Patricia de Lille nor  Helen Zille is a feminist, both are women of integrity, are intelligent and brave. They would make good presidents. So – do we need a woman president? Come on, let’s go for it…

This commentary was first published on the http://www.saelections.co.za website.

Sheila Meintjes is a Professor in the politics department at Wits University. She is the Chairperson of the Board of Women’sNet, as well as Tshwaranang Legal Advocacy Centre against Violence against Women.