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Thabo Mbeki was working for the African National Congress before presiding over South Africa’s transition to majority rule and becoming the President of South Africa.
Profession: President of the Republic of South Africa, Anti-Apartheid Campaigner
Country of Origin: South Africa
Country of Asylum: Zimbabwe
Country of Transit: Tanzania; United Kingdom; Russian Federation; Zambia; Botswana; Swaziland
Date of birth: 18 June 1942
Both of Mbeki’s parents were teachers and activists. His father was a prominent member of the ANC leadership and was imprisoned on Robben Island along with Mandela in 1964.
Mbeki joined the ANC Youth League in 1956 while still a student. When the school he attended at Lovedale closed down as a result of a school strike, Mbeki, determined to complete his schooling, continued his studies at home. He followed a correspondence course in economics with London University. (Some years later, while in exile, he received a Masters in Economics from Sussex University.) He moved to Johannesburg, where he came into contact with leading ANC figures such as Walter Sisulu and Duma Nokwe. After the banning of ANC, Mbeki continued to work underground in Pretoria and Witwatersrand.
Mbeki left the country in 1962 on the orders of ANC. A child of the liberation struggle, he remained active in student politics. He played an important role in building youth and student sections of ANC in exile. In 1970, he was sent to the Soviet Union for military training and was appointed that same year as Assistant Secretary of the ANC Revolutionary Council. He co-ordinated the movement’s propaganda in London (1967-70) and helped build up the underground movement in Lusaka (1971), Botswana (1973-74) and Swaziland (1975).
Mbeki became Political Secretary in the Office of the then President of ANC, Oliver Tambo, in Lusaka in 1978. From 1984-89, he was Director of the Department of Information and Publicity. In 1989, Mbeki became head of ANC’s International Affairs Department, where he began developing the strategy that would result in the first cross-border contacts with South Africans who were anxious to end apartheid.
Returning to South Africa in 1990, he was elected as the first Deputy President of the New Government of National Unity in preparation for South Africa’s first multiracial elections in 1994. In 1997, he was elected as the new President of ANC and was inaugurated as President of South Africa in June 1999.
Mbeki is known to have coined the African Renaissance culture, which embraces both modernisation and African heritage. For him, to be an African is to be, among others, Khoi, San, European, Malayan, Indian, Chinese: “We refuse to accept that our Africaness shall be defined by our race, colour, gender or historical origins. It is a firm assertion made by ourselves that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black or white.”
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