Sunday Times - Sunday, 19 September, 2004

"You have to fit into his schedule, so most of the time I don't go home until very late or the early hours, but that's fine. I hate getting up in the morning, but I don't mind going until very late," she told the Sunday Times.

When they do wrap up, Mbeki is driven a short distance to his residence. Gumbi drives herself home to Emmarentia in Johannesburg where, since her divorce three years ago, she lives with her teenage son and daughter and the house-keeper who makes her lifestyle possible.

It's a lifestyle she clearly loves: cultural centuries from the barefoot poverty of her rural Thabu Nchu upbringing, at the right hand of power and in a position to influence the unfolding history of her country and her continent.

Gumbi matriculated in 1976. Despite detention and police harassment, she completed a law degree at Wits University in 1983 and became the only woman amongst 260 advocates at the Pretoria bar in the final years of the struggle against apartheid. She first met Mbeki while she was working for the Independent Electoral Commission in 1994 and he recruited her as his legal adviser.

Now she is at his side almost every day, brainstorming the resolution of conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, legislation to bolster democracy or beating out the political fires that flare up almost weekly.

Though usually charming, she is tough and not universally liked, but few would question her intelligence, her commitment to her job and her boss, or her influence.

"My title is still legal adviser, but I don't really do legal work any more. I advise the President on anything that is put before me - economic, political, international, security.

"I love the international work and I do a lot of it, but since Professor [Wiseman] Nkuhlu has been drawn more and more into Nepad, I am doing more of things like the SNO [the telecoms second network operator], Eskom, Transnet," she said.

Gumbi is different in many ways from most of Mbeki's closest associates. She is a member of Azapo with a strong black consciousness ideology. And, while she has helped to define the structure of the Presidency, she does not like working within a structure herself.

Slender and elegant in clothes by her personal designer in Johannesburg, she likes the subtle trappings of success, but has little enthusiasm for those classic symbols of influence: bodyguards.

While the other advisers often communicate with Mbeki in writing, her input is mainly oral - talking things through for hours and challenging his ideas when appropriate.

"We talk about everything under the sun and we laugh a lot. You can challenge him, but usually he will talk things through until you understand his point of view and agree with him," she said. She insisted she had been able to change his mind, too, but declined to say what about.

She strongly defends Mbeki's controversial positions on Aids and Zimbabwe, insisting he is misunderstood, sometimes deliberately.

She said aides had advised Mbeki to withdraw from the public debate on Aids.

" 'Maybe you are just the wrong messenger,' one said to him. So he said: 'Okay, I won't say anything about it. But if I am asked, well, I am not stupid. I can't just mimic somebody else's line. Why am I not supposed to ask: how do I stop my people from dying?' "

She said Zimbabwe was a favourite issue because she loved the people. "I go there all the time. I went there on holiday with my children last year and I go there for work as well."

"On Aids and Zimbabwe . . . I have never lain awake at night on either issue."

Gumbi attends the Cabinet makgotla in January and July, but not regular Cabinet meetings. She said Mbeki kept her abreast of all the key issues, and ministers often discussed ideas with her before they were fed into the system.

"I know all the big issues long before they get to Cabinet," she said.

ANC leaders call her regularly and she visits the party headquarters often, but she does not advise Mbeki on party issues.

"He likes to keep party matters completely separate and by now I roughly know his comfort levels," she said.

She is clearly comfortable with him on many levels. He has visited her home and she is often at his residence at weekends, sometimes with her children and often with Mbeki's old friends, including ANC treasurer Mendi Msimang and Provincial and Local Government Minister Sydney Mufamadi.

She and the President swop books, "though he complains that I never return his, which is not true". And he will sometimes call her to alert her to an interesting programme on one of the documentary channels or to discuss a news item.

"He is really very easy to work with and he is very, very funny," she said.

They also talk about his plans for the future.

"He is so passionate about Africa and, in his own way, I think he will continue to do whatever he can to advance that agenda.

"Me? I want to go farming. Maybe I should ask Comrade Bob to give me a farm," she said with her slow, trademark chuckle.

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