In May this year Lindiwe Sisulu, the home affairs minister, launched Cosmo City - a R1,5bn public-private-partnership housing project tasked with the building of 15 000 low-cost, medium density and bonded houses near Randburg, Johannesburg.
In marking the occasion she dipped her hands in wet cement to make lasting prints - as if saying "Lindiwe was here". It is indeed the work she has done in this portfolio that she is most recognised for. After a less than rosy tenure as head of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) and a less invisible tenure as deputy minister of home affairs - Sisulu is finally claiming her glory.
She was born into the Sisulu dynasty, which together with the Mandelas, Tambos and Mbekis paid the ultimate sacrifice for SA's freedom, but is not known as one who uses her family name as a trump card. A hard worker, charmer and outright doer - she is arguably the best minister of housing this democratic dispensation has ever had.
Her tenure as intelligence minister was never easy. In spite of her name she has never been part of the inner circle of the ANC - an important attribute for anyone heading the NIA. Gender was also a hindrance, somewhat ironically perhaps in a decade where President Thabo Mbeki has openly campaigned for women power. However, intelligence portfolios the world over have never been women's turfs and in SA this was not about to change either. She rarely enjoyed the support of the invisible powers-that-be and was thus courteously redeployed.
Those who work with her say she doesn't delegate much, choosing instead to get her hands dirty. She's known to give her 18 hours a day in the office just to make sure things are moving in the right direction. She is popular with financial institutions, recently signing an agreement with banks to improve access to housing finance in previously underserviced areas and to low-income earners. Sisulu prefers to avoid a war and rather charm her way through - a strategy which has meant that she gets her way more often than not. She exudes dynamic authority and yet gives the impression of being warm and sensitive to issues affecting the downtrodden. In 2004 she came to the rescue of 11 Soweto residents who were being evicted by banks for failing to make bond repayments. She negotiated with the banks to halt evictions until she found the families decent shelter. She's been vocal on the appalling state of government low-cost houses built between 1994 and 2002 and is on a mission to bring to book developers of these shoddy houses.
Born in 1954 in Johannesburg, from Sisulu stock, she could never escape the political bug. Obtaining most of her education outside SA - she was detained for 11 months in 1976 while on a visit home from Lesotho - she left the country after her release and worked for the ANC's external mission. In 1990 she became personal assistant to Jacob Zuma, who at the time was head of the ANC's intelligence department. She holds an M Phil from the University of York and her dissertation was "Women at work and the liberation struggle in SA". She has stayed true to the ideals of this struggle. Quoting from the 1955 Freedom Charter, she told an international housing conference recently that her vision was of a "SA where all would have access to adequate and decent shelter".
