Ms Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, President of the African National Congress Women's League, occupies a leading position on the ANC's list of candidates for the National Assembly, in apparent contravention of the organisation's guidelines for the selection of candidates.
Ms Madikizela-Mandela, former wife of President Mandela and a convicted kidnapper, is ranked 10th on the ANC's national list of candidates. She is thus assured of re-election when the nation goes to the polls, in all probability at the end of May.
One of the criteria laid down by the ANC's national executive committee is that the list of candidates should not include ANC members who have been convicted of a criminal offence, a condition which should, on the face of it, have disqualified Ms Madikizela-Mandela, whose conviction for kidnapping in the Supreme Court in 1991 was upheld by the Appeal Court in 1993.
In an attempt to justify her inclusion, the ANC Secretary-General, Mr Kgalema Motlanthle, states that her prosecution and conviction occurred "within the context of consistent persecution by the old regime".
However, it is a matter of record that she was charged with a common law criminal offence and tried in open court.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which investigated allegations that Ms Madikizela-Mandela was involved in late 1980s in the slaying of people deemed to be spies or collaborators, has recorded a damning finding on the controversial ANC leader.
It states in its final report that she was central to the formation of the Mandela United Football Club, that "the club was involved in. . . killing, torture assaults and arson", that those who opposed the club were branded as informers and killed, and that she chose not to address the problems emanating from the club's murderous activities.
Ms Madikizela-Mandela's inclusion on the list seems to be a product of her own tenacity and the durability of her power base, as much as it is a indication of moral flexibility in the upper echelons of the ANC.
She is not the only candidate on ANC election lists for the National Assembly and the nine provincial legislatures to be in breach of the ANC's own guidelines. The lists include the names of several disgraced ANC leaders at provincial level who were dismissed for their suspected involvement in maladministration and malfeasance.
One of the dismissed leaders on the list for the provincial legislature in Mpumalanga is Mr Steve Mabona, who helped the deputy speaker in parliament obtain a fraudulent driving licence and who resigned the day before a commission of inquiry recommended he be sacked for his role in the scam.
Another is a former member of the cabinet in North-West province, who was dismissed after she was found to have allocated herself R500,000 (£58,700) for a trip to the Olympic Games in Atlanta in 1996. Mr Ryan Coetzee, of the Democratic Party, accuses the ANC of contradicting its own stated policy of aspiring to clean up government with people of proved trustworthiness.
Of Ms Madikizela-Mandela, who was sacked from her post as deputy minister by President Mandela for undertaking an unauthorised trip to West Africa, Mr Coetzee says: "Winnie follows no rules but her own. She regards herself as above the law and beyond its reach."