Helen Zille is the mayor of Cape Town and as the head of the Democratic Alliance party she's also the official opposition leader in South Africa. As a young journalist she was fiercely critical of the white government; she is now one of the most prominent critics of the ruling African National Congress. She accused the government of behaving like the apartheid regime after police arrested her for leading a demonstration against drug dealers in Cape Town. This week the National Prosecuting Authority announced that she will no longer be charged. But what chance does she, a white woman, stand of becoming leader of a country still traumatised by the memory of apartheid?
Miriam talks to journalist Marianne Thamm who is writing a biography of Helen Zille, and to Allister Sparks, former editor of the Rand Daily Mail, which hired Helen as a young reporter in the 1970's.
