11 April 2009

She first caught our eye last January with a flourish of banknotes pinned to her hat at her wedding. Her new husband Jacob Zuma wore a loin skin.

Theirs was a traditional love song and dance out in the fields of Nkandla, and all of that sentimentality didn't do Nompumelelo Ntuli any harm at all.

As the fourth wife of the ANC president, the 33-year-old is said to be a frontrunner for the title of First Lady, although Zuma celebrates his 50th wedding anniversary with his beloved first wife Sizakele Khumalo this year. Tradition would suggest Khumalo should be number one. But MaNtuli, as the younger wife is known, is starting to appear more and more in public: pretty, bosomy and apparently interested in other's people's wellbeing, while Khumalo is apparently as shy as a whisper.

A month before the election, Ntuli made a gracious appearance at Qokololo Stadium in Pietermaritzburg, vindicated by it being packed with Christians who had gone there for her own Masibambisane Prayer Day. Sprouting her wings, her moment in front of the faithful came out of a project that has blossomed out of Ntuli's intended foundation for social good.

She appealed for tolerance "even if you don't see eye-to-eye politically.. God does not like people who fight like cats and dogs," Ntuli said, lighting candles for divine intervention in the epic heartaches of the people.

It is believed Zuma will behave according to culture when he submits the name of the First Lady to the Spousal Office in the Office of the Presidency in Pretoria - a ceremonial act that will have to happen sooner rather than later to avoid a repeat of the embarrassing Kgalema Motlanthe wife scandal. And the nation waits with some excitement to meet her.

Most First Ladies share the same urge as beauty queens to do charitable deeds, so it wouldn't be seemly for Ntuli to over-indulge on Ferragamo, like Zimbabwe's scary Grace Mugabe. Zuma's fifth wife, Thobeka Mabhija, is said to be the one with the taste for luxury. But whether either - or Khumalo, his first wife - can be a Graca Machel, is another challenge altogether.

The first plus, though, is that Ntuli's husband loves her. He said so in an interview: "I love my wives and I'm proud of my children." The second is that she has claimed she doesn't like the spotlight, although Mabhija, waiting in the wings, has denied allegations that she informed Durban's high society that she, not Ntuli, would soon be the First Lady.

Zuma, on the other hand, has never scrimped on warmth for Khumalo - with whom he has no children - describing her as "a wife, a friend, a sister and a mother to me".

If charity is the charm factor, beauty is the X-factor for First Ladies, and South Africa has really only had two who could claim it. Both belonged to Nelson Mandela. The first was Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, the second his daughter Zenani who was his escort and a proxy First Lady after he left Winnie.

Before the Mandelas, we had a chorus of big ladies of impeccable Boere stock wearing blustery hats to distract us from their grimaces of subjugation. In fact, we were wall-to-wall with pink women wearing hairdos until Marike de Klerk. Hesitant, but somewhat less fraught after she did the Botox, Mrs de Klerk would meet a horrible fate at the hand of her apartment block's evil security guard.

The role of the African First Lady should not be that different to the one being played by the highly-praised Michelle Obama in the US. Stand by your man, have a brain, be bright and attractive and be a mother among mothers. Superwoman, actually. But there does seem to be an even greater responsibility on the women with the best security detail in Africa having no choice but to be involved in society, with hunger, poverty, disease and abuse rather more pressing issues than they are in the US.

Certainly, despite the Grace Mugabes and, almost as bad, the Lucy Kibakis, there are many thoughtful African First Ladies trying hard to make an impact on their world.

In fact, some neo-Afro-pessimists have even claimed that, were it not for the kindness of their wives, many men in power on this continent would simply have gone on the rampage. Indeed, although First Ladies are not elected, their husbands sometimes rely on them to mediate conflict, establish bases for compassion and act as a foil for political excess.

South Africa's second-to-last First Lady, Zanele Mbeki, was a strong contender for one of the continent's top five leading spouses in her day, even though she couldn't raise a sparkle in a champagne glass, so dull was her public persona. A gender activist who was not shy to tell the key Beijing +Five conference that she was not an accessory to her husband's job, Zanele Mbeki hung out comfortably with those members of Africa's First Ladies club who were not only there for the free eye-shadow and trips to Washington.

Who knows which former First Lady may write the next big African tell-all, though, Remi Obasanjo having first sat on that throne of blood after the enmity between her and her husband Olusegan spattered out of control.

Bitter-Sweet: My Life With Obasanjo, which enthusiastically described a man who was a violent wife-basher and womaniser, arrived on the shelves just as Olusegan Obasanjo had surrendered power peacefully before a third term and was trying to establish himself as the predominant peacemonger on the continent. The book - which laid bare screaming fights, bitchy mistresses and gory affairs with medal-bedecked generals - was a runaway best-seller in Nigeria. He said she was a woman scorned.

Other African First Ladies have rejuvenated all the Western cliches.

Zambia's Vera Chiluba was said to have asked for the most expensive divorce in history when her 33-year marriage to the doomed and derided Frederick Chiluba ended. She allegedly demanded a settlement of some $2,5-billion - which was calculated to be considerably more than her country's GDP - as well as six houses, a farm, some 400 cows, sheep and goats. At the time of her request, she was sponging off government while the bean-counters were desperately trying to work out just how much her ex was worth.

Her successor, Maureen Mwanawasa, would instead arise to become the chairwoman of the Organisation of African First Ladies, feted along with the First Lady of Ethiopia, Azeb Mesfin, and the well-liked First Lady of Rwanda, Jeanette Kagame.

But it can all go so horribly wrong. Ghana's Nana Rawlings - wife of the irascible Jerry - was long touted as the face of the women's movement in her country, touring the world with platitudes. But back home, said her critics, she had done little to staunch the suffering of the people. Perhaps her apparent schadenfreude was not as bad as that of Maryam Abacha, all-time favourite of the Nigerian 419 scams, who was said to have tried to flee her country with suitcases full of cash when it all ended in tears at the graveside of her dictator husband Sani.

Yet few First Ladies can compare for ghoulish comedy with Kenya's Lucy Kibaki who, like Grace Mugabe, doesn't seem to have a problem with behaving terribly badly in public. In Kibaki's case, truly sympathetic sisters could almost have forgiven her for lashing out at a state official during an Independence Day celebration at State House in Nairobi. The man had, after all, mistakenly introduced her by the name of the woman alleged to be her rival to her husband, Mwai Kibaki's heart. Unfortunately, that was not the first time Mrs Kibaki had raised her hand on camera, having already once allegedly hit a photographer after he filmed a row she had had with a neighbour.

Then there was the rather awkward moment in 2006 when Mrs Kibaki - who at that time chaired the Organisation of African Ladies - told Kenyan schoolgirls that sexual abstinence, not condoms, was essential to saving their lives. So far, so good, until she added the fateful words: "Fellow citizens, this gadget called the condom, is causing the spread of Aids in this country. I am not telling you to use condoms. I am not in favour of them."

Small fry, perhaps, compared to the most despicable First Lady in Africa's recent history: Mrs Mugabe. No matter who Zuma chooses to be the woman at his side during his term of office, she would be well-advised to steer clear of this international hate figure. Rather, Mrs Zuma should perhaps look to the currently untainted Mesfin, the Ethiopian First Lady and president of the Organization of African First Ladies Against HIV/Aids.

"African women must have access to power," she has said. "If we want to win the war against the poverty, we must empower them .. to be free to make choices. We deserve to be in a world free of violence, where safety is real and where opportunities are boundless."

Next week, Mesfin and other African First Ladies travel to the US for a summit to develop programmes for mothers and children on the continent. They will have to present their domestic and regional efforts, engage in dialogue with leaders in the field of global health, and set actionable goals. We anticipate the involvement in similar efforts in the future from our next First Lady.

"We belong to a new and different generation," Jeanette Kagame, wife of the Rwandan president Paul Kagame, said in an interview about the summit. "We are all mothers at the end of the day. Most of our countries have embarked on expensive development projects and we would hate to see that progress stalled. The cost in lives has been too high."