Amid all the clamour from the ANC leadership for party deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe to be promoted to a senior post in cabinet, one voice is missing: Motlanthe's.
Though he argues he has more important work to do at Luthuli House, he will ultimately have to follow his organisation's mandate. All that stands between him and a cabinet post now is President Thabo Mbeki.
Motlanthe's reticence is nothing new. While other ANC leaders trumpet every achievement, Motlanthe's biography gives away few facts. Most of those who know where he was born and raised aren't talking - though the ANC's Jessie Duarte says he is from Soweto.
He is thought to be 58 but this isn't confirmed. Little is known about his childhood. As one commentator observed, Motlanthe appears not to have existed until he was imprisoned on Robben Island.
Why is he so keen to stay in the background? His politics are those of the old liberation movement where the organisation, rather than government, is the primary force behind social transformation. These are the politics he learnt on Robben Island, where he spent 10 years after being sentenced in 1977 for involvement in the Black Consciousness Movement.
Some in the ANC say Motlanthe "still lives on the island " - a reference to his ponderous political approach and fondness for quoting the words of ANC and communist stalwarts. Described by peers as a good historian, Motlanthe has a passion for books about the struggle that others have discarded, and he regularly reads and considers ANC history.
Principled and committed to revolutionary theory and the traditions of the ANC, Motlanthe is unlikely to be wrong-footed when it comes to organisational practice. However, these principles do not always match those of a liberal democracy and one can expect differences of opinion with Western political parties on many basic issues.
Take imperialism. Like many in African liberation movements, Motlanthe believes the West retains an imperialist agenda, threatening African sovereignty.
Some of his ideas appear naïve. In an interview with the FM, he criticised the model of black economic empowerment, preferring a system where children straight out of college are mentored in state-funded empowerment enterprises.
Some say Motlanthe's dreamy policy suggestions are the result of sitting at the centre of a party that has lacked policy capacity. If he had to find practical solutions, his approach would be different.
What has Motlanthe achieved in politics, particularly while in the ANC?
After his release from prison, he joined the National Union of Mineworkers and was elected general secretary in 1992. Five years later, he succeeded Cyril Ramaphosa as secretary-general of the ANC, a position he held for 10 years.
ANC views on his performance are divided. Some describe him as weak and as having presided helplessly over a degenerating and corrupt organisation. Others say his hands were tied by Mbeki, who beefed up the office of the presidency and sidelined the ANC.
Motlanthe said in a newspaper interview: "The essence of the problem was that you had a dominant cabinet... which began to function as a cabal within the ANC." Setting this right has become a priority for Motlanthe and other ANC leaders, who want put ANC decision-making at the centre of government.
On a strategic level over the past 10 years, Motlanthe was a key player in the leadership collective that conceptualised and drove perhaps the biggest disaster of the transition period: the ANC's bid to place its hands "on all the levers of power" and deploy its members to all social and state institutions of power.
The effect was to collapse the distinction between party and state and encourage growing abuse of state power and economic activities arising from it.
However, when things began to go wrong and corruption within the state and ANC began to take root, Motlanthe spoke out clearly and robustly.
His personal integrity has not been seriously questioned. An attempt to link him to a questionable loan made by the Land Bank to food company Pamodzi, in which he bought his own shares, failed.
There have been occasions, however, when he has been implicated in influence-peddling, apparently at the behest of the ANC. On one occasion he accompanied businessman Sandi Majali on an oil-buying trip to Iraq, with the obvious intention of providing ANC sanction to the mission.
Though detractors say he is not as clean as he appears, nothing of substance has stuck. Indeed, Motlanthe appears desperate not to be embarrassed.
This perhaps explains his over reaction to the hoax e-mail saga two years ago, when Motlanthe was convinced there was a plan to derail his career even though few others took it seriously.
The e-mail saga is important as not only does it cast doubt on Motlanthe's judgment but it appears to have tipped him into the Jacob Zuma camp. Before 2006 he was impartial in ANC factional battles. However, he was clearly aligned with the Zuma camp at the Polokwane party conference in December.
There, he was the only person able to calm tempers and restore order to the often raucous proceedings. As a result, he emerged as an elder statesman with the dignity and respect accorded to few among the leadership.
