Baleka Mbete

Baleka Mbete (* September 24, 1949 in Claremont, near Durban ), also known as Baleka Mbete - Kgositsile, is a South African politician and former Vice-President of South Africa.

Life

Mbete grew up with her grandmother in the north of the Transvaal and the school closed in Durban from. In 1958 she moved with her family to Alice, where her father had received at the University of Fort Hare a job as a librarian. After her father, a member of the South African Communist Party, had lost his job because of the ban on political activities at universities, she was sent to a boarding school in Durban, where in 1967 they made ​​the high school graduation. She then enrolled in a college in Eshowe, but was expelled because of provocations. In 1973, she joined a college training as a teacher and taught in Durban.

Mbete became involved in her time in Durban at the Black Consciousness Movement and sought contact with the African National Congress ( ANC). After her brother was arrested as a member of the youth wing of the ANC, she decided to quit as a teacher. Shortly thereafter, she was also detained; in prison, she received a message of her brother with an urgent notice to leave the country. In April 1976 Mbete fled first to Swaziland in 1997 to Tanzania. There, she was elected as the first secretary of the regional ANC women's organization. In 1978 she married the exiled writer Keorapetse Kgositsile. With him she went to Nairobi in 1981, where he taught at the University of Nairobi. Because of the involvement in the coup attempt against Daniel arap Moi Mbete fled to Botswana, began work for the ANC again and was director of the Medu Arts Ensemble Gaborone. After the attack, the South African armed forces to Gaborone in 1985 she had to flee again; in Lusaka, she was active also in the ANC Women's League.

1990 Mbete went back to South Africa and was elected as the first General Secretary of the women's organization. From 1994 to 1996 she was a spokesperson for the ANC deputy president following the Parliament. Since 2004, she was President of the Parliament, 2008/2009 Vice President of the country. She had been considered the favorite for the post of President Jacob Zuma, however, suggested Kgalema Motlanthe ago. Since the inauguration of Jacob Zuma Mbete is no particular tasks with the title of a National Chairman in Luthuli House, the ANC headquarters in Johannesburg, used.