‘top stories: a new news our top stories: a new offensive to take back raqqa from so—called islamic state is under way. us backed fighters of the syrian democratic forces push into the city, the last remaining stronghold of is, which the group maintain is the centre of the caliphate. thousands attend the funeral of american student otto warmbier, who was held for 15 month ina warmbier, who was held for 15 month in a north korean prison. he was returned to the us in a coma and died days later. this story is trending on bbc .com — prince harry suggested none of his family wants to bea suggested none of his family wants to be a future king or queen. in an interview with american magazine newsweek he said the royals were acting for the greater good of the people. that is all from me, stay with us here on bbc world news. goodbye. now it is time for hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur. jacob zuma's grip on power

in south africa is loosening. he will relinquish leadership of the anc at the end of year. and whether he will complete his term as south africa's president is uncertain, as allegations of cronyism and corruption pile up around his government. my guest to day it is thuli madonsela, south africa's public protector until late last year. she exposed a web of worrying connections between the state and big business interests. but are her concerns about to be buried? thuli madonsela, welcome to hardtalk.

thank you for being here stephen. it is such a honour. well, i think we have to begin with that explosive report that you wrote and published before leaving the office of public protector at the end of last year. it was all about your concerns about state capture. the idea was that certain big business interest, perhaps individuals, had undue influence on the government. you wanted a fully fledged judicial commission of inquiry to be set up within 30 days of your report's publication. seven months later, that has not happened. how do you feel about that? i'm concerned that the commissioner for the inquiry has not been appointed.

and it is not about the fact that i wrote the state capture report. the concern is that the uncertainty and the suspicions have created a certain level of dysfunctionality within the executive. you saw some ministers being dismissed, including the whistleblower. just generally there is a certain level of animosity. there is also a trust deficit at the level of the public. because of that, i would rather that the commissioner for the inquiry would have been appointed immediately. you give some me interesting information there. do you make a direct link between the firing of the deputy finance minister, mrjonas, and his involvement in one of your key allegations, that is that there was an effort to persuade him to take the finance minister's job with the offer of a huge amount of money to go with it, as a sweetener, if he did certain things on taking the job. he was later — he refused,

that's the allegation he makes, and he refused to take the job on that basis. he was then fired in march 2017. you see that his firing was directly linked? i am saying it is one of the factors. because the allegation — apart from that discredited intelligence report, was that the relationship had been soured, or the relationship was dysfunctional. and because of that, there is a linkage between the unhealthy relationship and what happened. the centre of this is allegations concerning two brothers, the gupta brothers, who have denied the allegations in your state of capture report. it should be said you itemise several different ways. one involving the deputy finance minister, others involving some of their businesses in the energy sector. there were a raft of allegations

that suggested you believed that the guptas exercised massive and undue influence over mr zuma's government. is it still your contention today? it is not really my belief. all i said was that there was prima facie evidence that there was wrongdoing. otherwise, there was a case to be answered. and presented an opportunity for the zuma and gupta families and others who are implicated to present their side of the story in a commission of inquiry. with respect, you would not have presented your report unless you believed there was a degree of credibility in the allegations. otherwise, it would be plain irresponsible. i believed that there was a degree of credibility notjust in the allegations but any evidence that i uncovered. in the report, we included

evidence of mr a] gupta, who spoke directly with me about his relationship, particularly the president. we also include cellphone evidence that puts people in the gupta compound several times and in proximity to their contentious affairs. according... that's what i think is the deeply concerning. the brief, very short lived appointment as finance minister of mr van rooyen, back in 2015. another allegation concerning the guptas and their influence, which has been denied, both by the guptas, and by mr van rooyen. so in the end, whether we said today? you have produced this report. all of the key players in the report absolutely deny the truth of undue influence. and without a commission of enquiry, led by an independentjudge, as you wanted, it seems there's no way of getting

to the truth. 100%. only a commission of inquiry will settle this and also free the people that feel that they are unjustly accused and that the evidence in the report is not credible, in their view. only a commission of inquiry can save everyone. president zuma says that you overstepped your powers, your constitutional powers, as public protector, as was until last year, when you said the person who must appoint this independent authority at the head of the commission must be appointed by the chief justice of south africa. mr zuma's point is that that is a presidential prerogative, and that you undermined those powers. the president is wrong that i overstepped my powers. firstly, i'd say the chiefjustice should appoint the judge. i said the judge should be selected by the chief justice, which is standard practice. secondly, i wouldn't be

usurping your powers, it you weren't doing nothing. the president had a duty to investigate this matter from the moment it broke out, because it had the potential to poison the waters. but also, if this was true, then a lot of damage was being done. he did nothing. if i am a police officer and i say to do yourjob, i am not usurping your powers, i am just exercising my powers. yourjob would still be yourjob. if yourjob is to drive off a parking lot, the police officer continue to do so, and that is it. what do you make of the way that jacob zuma has handled your report and its fallout in the seven months since you published it? i think it has been odd. odd? i think it has been very odd, and confusing. it is detrimental to jacob zuma,

to government, and to his son, who is in business with the gupta family, and to the guptas. because if all the evidence we have is incorrect, in that the allegations are not true, it is best that this matter be investigated expeditiously and their names cleared. do you have faith that your successor as public protector, ms mkhwebane, will fully and completely pursue the state of capture report and a thorough investigation of it? i have no reasons to doubt my successor, and certainly, also, it would be rude of me to comment about my successor. my predecessors never commented. i did, however, make a binding decision that the next phase of the state capture investigation

be done by a judicial commission of inquiry. because of the nature of the allegations and the need for the public to be satisfied that no stone was left unturned. i don't think that any opaque process at this stage would address the trust deficit amongst ordinary people. but the reason i ask about your faith in your successor is because there are some things that suggest that you and she do not see things in the same way. for example, she seemed determined to investigate your release of audiotapes of one conversation you had with president zuma. she seemed to think was unacceptable that release those audiotapes, which, perhaps, to some south africans, indicates that she is more minded to view this from the interests of jacob zuma. also, she seems to have pursued

an allegation against you that sometime ago your son was involved in an accident, when he was driving a car that was state property, which you did not offer compensation for, which i know that since then, you have written a statement of regret about. it seems to me that you and your successor are at odds. she has made her choices and i am not there tojudge. history willjudge the two of us. regarding the issue of my son, my concern was that she prejudged it. after all the hullabaloo and the dragging of my name in the mud, she then came back and said she is going to investigate. i'm still waiting for the outcome of that. but in the meantime, avoiding all of this noise, i decided to pay... because the issue was not that my son did not drive the car and did not cause the accident.

the issue was did i do anything wrong? and i thought it was improperfor me to be judged to have done anything wrong when the rules... well it's key to the the integrity of your position that you, and now she, in the role, need to be seen as whiter than white. i wonder if south africa is now have a bit of a seed of doubt about your integrity. you have spent so much time discussing jacob zuma's integrity. what about yours? i don't know what many south africans think. ijust do know that i have never done anything to break the law. and on this one, that's why spoke out, to make sure it was clear that i never did anything wrong. i stuck by the principles. my son, under my guidance, had only used the car when i was there, because in terms of the rules, i was allowed to have anybody drive me.

and on that night, it was clear to everybody that i was not involved. we tried to get the car at 5am in the morning with my protectors, and the car wasn't there. for them to suggest that there was anything i could have done to prevent that, or there was anything that they did to cause that, was improper. and at that stage, i felt it sounded malicious. let's get back to jacob zuma. because in the end, he is at the heart of this question of governance and integrity in south africa today. there is a sense that this has become personal between you and him. going all the way back to your investigation of the nkandla estate scandal — the degree to which you revealed that he had spent an awful lot of money in ways that were nothing to do with security, but, it seems,

to do with personal enjoyment of his property. in the end, he had to pay back a huge amount of money, i think more than half a million us dollars worth of improvements, he had to pay back. do you think that he now regards your relationship with him as personally toxic? he hasn't said that to me. i recall that before the constitutional court decided that my powers were binding, and that there was nothing wrong with the decisions i had made, i met with him on a friday, we had a cordial relationship — or a cordial meeting with him and his son, and we discussed this matter. and he just said he was wrongly advised by lawyers. he did not give me a sense he held me responsible for what happened. because at that stage, he was now clear that he had a duty to have stopped this, because he had an opportunity after the media raise the alarm to stop it. but also, secondly, none of us has to benefit from government at the expense of taxpayers beyond what we are entitled to under the law and policies. do you think he is fit to govern south africa, today?

that is not for me to determine. you are entitled to your opinion as a south african citizen. if i was an academic only, which i am, now, and part—time journalist, i would have an opinion. but since i am a former public protector, and as you say, this may be seen by some as personal, i choose not to express a view. i do know thatjacob zuma has done the best he could. it is up to south africans in the future when they choose leaders for complex positions to decide who can operate in these complex positions. as a result of the work you did investigating the allegations of these results, you received threats, intimidation, people were standing outside your house, chanting against you. i believe that at one point, you were accused of working for the cia. i gather that you also faced death threats.

what is your feeling about the comfort you have in your own country today, the security you have? i feel fairly secure, but i am concerned, because people who once called me a comrade, they have now said things against me. it was not nice. but that is the least of my concerns. the worst thing was that the government of south africa decided that it was going to investigate those allegations. another allegation was that i was working for the president of america to determine who hates america. why would they use me to spy against presidents, to find out who hates america?

the south african government chose to give credence to those allegations, and that brings us back to president zuma. do you believe he was responsible for the intimidatory actions against you? i will never know, but from what i heard from his advisers, at least during the uganda investigation, during the state investigation, they don't know. he has never given me a sense that he hates me personally. but i do know that he could have stopped it. at no stage did he ever have it stopped. the president did say that this must stop. another big picture result of the work you've done is a discussion about whether south africa's constitution is really working. going back to the days of writing that constitution, which you, as a postgraduate student, you actually became

involved in the creation of the constitution. one of the main points is the separation of powers, the office of public protector is one guarantee of checking on the power of governments in south africa. i think it is clear what the judiciary does and what the legislature does. it was not always clear what the protector has to do. it is clear that they have the power to investigate in suspected improper conduct. but i always thought that you could not force people to do things, because you are not in charge. sorry to interrupt, but you very consciously left the amc before

you took the public protectorjob. i wonder whether you believe there is a danger, perhaps even now, that the public protector office may become too closely allied with the executive government? it is important for the public protector not to be seen to be aligned to any political party. you are supposed to be agnostic. i can say that during my time, the office was politically agnostic. you say, during my time. what we have today is a very interesting controversy about comments made by your successor. the relatively new public protector who, in recent days, has, in the midst of an investigation to an historic allegation of wrongdoing in a south african bank, has issued an opinion suggesting

that the south african reserve bank should change its constitutional obligation to put protection of the currency at the centre of policy—making. she has suggested that in future, the reserve bank should actually focus more on delivering growth and equitable growth that spreads prosperity to a greater number of south african people. what do you think of her intervention in that way? she is making her own choices based on how she understands the constitution and the law. i don't think it's proper for me to comment on that. would you have made that sort of decision? do you think that is part of your remit as public protector? you are getting me to comment indirectly. all i can say is that that

investigation has concluded and i was at the point where i should have signed a provisional report. during my time, the issues of the powers of the reserve bank was not an issue. did you see it as part of your remit? i would say that the complaints did not involve the powers of the reserve bank in this case. the complaint was... you think she overstepped when she waded into this argument? i don't know. a lot has happened since october last year. complaints may have been lodged about the powers of the reserve bank that was linked with this. she may have come across issues... the former finance minister, you are trying to be diplomatic, but the former finance minister said it was nothing to do with her, it is so above her pay grade. what you make of that? he has the right to comment.

right now, it would be rude to comment on my successors. i will not tempt you to be rude. but i am going to ask you about state capture. we talked about your report, it underpins so much of what south africans are debating today. how did do these allegations go? what if president zuma was to resign because of the allegations surrounding his government? would that be an end to it? or do you think that this concept of state capture runs much deeper than that in today's's south africa? the allegations and evidence, they suggest there is a very serious problems. however, the evidence that we have at the moment is really relating to president zuma, and aligned companies. therefore, when president zuma's term has ended, perhaps the story will be different. but i wouldn't say it would necessarily end, how do you end the presidency in a way that restores public trust?

we need to have a public enquiry. ending with something personal. you were brought up in a poor family. you are very much part of the liberation generation. as a young woman, you helped write the south african constitution. you worked in the public service for much of your life. it seems to me that, having quit the public protector‘s office, you seem very disillusioned with how south africa has travelled and you believe that nelson mandela's vision has not been fulfilled in the country. are you disillusioned? i am disappointed with some of the decisions made, and i am disappointed

with what is said by many people in power. i see a lot of activities that are taking place now that i'm making sure that we get out of this, and if you ask me what is going to be the future, two years from now, isee a progress in south africa that is not facing any economic difficulties. i see us having a better state. we have to end there, but thuli madonsela, thank you very much for being on hardtalk. thank you very much. well, it has certainly freshened up

right across the uk. here'sjust a reminder of the heatwave we had on wednesday. the peak 35, nearly, degrees celsius across the south—east. come thursday, almost a ten degree drop as these fresher atlantic conditions are setting in. but some spectacular weather as well. this is a picture of a thunderstorm taken by a weather watcher in kent. but further north, and across western areas, those atlantic clouds have been rolling in, bringing much cooler conditions. this will be responsible for bringing windy weather back into the weekend.

rain getting into parts of northern ireland, western and south—western scotland. the south and east, it will be a dry into the night. —— dry end. still quite warm for the morning. 14 or 15 celsius. let's look at rush hour. at this stage in belfast, glasgow, maybe edinburgh, not too much rain. some heavier pulse is possible a little further south into the lake district, lancashire maybe, but for most of the central and southern areas, a dry start today. some sunshine poking through and temperatures around 15 or 16 degrees. now, this here, this band of weather, this cold front or cool front, that brings fresher atlantic conditions in, it is producing southwards in the morning and into the afternoon. so across parts of the midlands and wales, there will be spots

of rain, and as it moves south, it is good to brighten up in belfast and glasgow. sunshine in the afternoon. a fair bit of cloud in london, 23. it is worth pointing out the wind in northern scotland. could be up to gale force. unusualfor this time of year, with showers around, as well. on saturday, and sunday as well, a bit of a mixed day. sunny spells, passing showers, and even those even fresher atlantic conditions setting in. many of us will not have temperatures up to 20 degrees. maybe london just scraping into the low 20s. compared to the rest of europe, it has been hot in paris. similar temperatures to london. berlin as well. as you'd expect in the mediterranean, in rome, temperatures still on the hot side. the next two days, fresh and breezy. rain at times, but also some sunshine from time to time. goodbye. i'm sharanjit leyl in singapore. the headlines: a new offensive on the syrian city of raqqa.

a special report from the frontline with us—backed fighters battling to drive the so—called islamic state out of their last stronghold. this is about as far forward a position... explosion. about as far forward as they have managed to hold. but at you can still see, there is still sniper fire going hold. but at you can still see, there is still sniperfire going on here. thousands attend the funeral of the american student who died just days after being freed in a coma by north korea. i'm kasia madera in london. also in the programme: who wants to be a king or queen? no—one according to prince harry in a candid interview