Thabo Mbeki

Thabo Mbeki, born in 1942, South African activist, leader of the African National Congress (ANC) from 1997 to 2007, and president of South Africa since 1999. The son of Govan Mbeki, a prominent ANC leader, Mbeki was born in Idutywa, in a region of southeastern South Africa then known as the Transkei. Mbeki joined the ANC Youth League as a young teenager in 1956. He attended Lovedale secondary school near Alice until a strike closed the school. Mbeki then returned to the Transkei region and graduated from St. John’s High School in Umtata in 1959. He moved to Johannesburg and enrolled as a correspondence student in economics with the University of London.

While in Johannesburg, Mbeki was elected national secretary of the African Students’ Association. The organization eventually collapsed following the arrest of many of its members by the South African government. In 1960 the South African government banned the ANC and other organizations that were active in opposition to apartheid, the government’s system of forced segregation of the races. Mbeki then worked underground as an opposition organizer. He left South Africa illegally in 1962, on instructions from the ANC. He went first to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), then to Tanzania, and finally to Britain. There Mbeki studied at the University of Sussex where he received a master’s degree in economics in 1966. He worked for the ANC out of London from 1966 until 1970 when he went to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) for military training.

In 1971 Mbeki served as assistant secretary of the ANC’s Revolutionary Council in Lusaka, Zambia. He undertook missions for the ANC to Botswana, Swaziland, and Nigeria during the 1970s. In 1975, at the age of 33, Mbeki became the youngest member of the ANC’s National Executive Committee. Three years later he became political secretary to ANC president Oliver Tambo. In the early 1980s Mbeki assumed the position of director of the ANC’s information office where he played a significant role in focusing the international media’s attention on apartheid. In 1989 he was named head of the ANC’s department of international affairs.

After the ban on the ANC was lifted in 1990, Mbeki returned to South Africa to participate in negotiations with the government over the future of the country. He succeeded Oliver Tambo as national chair of the ANC in 1993 (Tambo had been elected national chair after relinquishing the presidency to Nelson Mandela in 1991). Free multiracial elections were held for the first time in South Africa in 1994, with the ANC gaining the support of the majority of voters. On May 10, 1994, Mbeki was sworn in as first deputy president in the new government headed by Nelson Mandela. Mandela, who announced in 1996 that he would not seek another term as president, groomed Mbeki to succeed him.

In late 1997 Mbeki succeeded Mandela as president of the ANC. Following the ANC’s victory in June 1999 elections, Mbeki was selected as the next president of South Africa. Under Mbeki, the government supplied electricity and power to millions of South Africans and built thousands of houses for the poor. In 2004 the ANC again dominated legislative elections and Mbeki was reelected the country’s president. However, he lost the presidency of the ANC at a party conference in December 2007. ANC delegates overwhelmingly supported Mbeki’s charismatic rival, Jacob Zuma. Zuma’s image as a champion of the rights of ordinary people contrasted with that of Mbeki, whom the rank and file of the party viewed as aloof.