We must support leaders who can listen to truth when in power.(News)

BYLINE: Diane Salters

Every now and then a particular phrase captures the public imagination and seems to express something important that needs saying.

Since former deputy health minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge used the phrase "speak truth to power" after her dismissal by Thabo Mbeki in August, it has been cropping up in editorials, letter columns and even in a recent advertisement for Andrew Feinstein's book After The Party.

Yet not everyone uses it to mean the same thing. In his response to Madlala-Routledge, Mbeki interpreted this phrase as a sort of plea for protection, a claim to the right to speak out under the freedom of expression guaranteed in the constitution.

Yet this phrase has a history with which our president seems unfamiliar. This phrase is no plea for protection. In its original usage, it is a declaration of willingness to speak one's truth, and stand defenceless in the winds that may then blow from the corridors of power.

Madlala-Routledge is a Quaker; she is a member of the Religious Society of Friends, known since the 17th century as Quakers.

As a Quaker, I recognised that in using this phrase she was drawing on a well-established Quaker tradition that calls on us to speak out with integrity, regardless of powerful injunctions from …