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| Curriculum vitae of Thabo Mbeki |
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Thabo Mbeki was born on 18 June 1942 in Idutywa, Queenstown. He joined the African National Congress (ANC) Youth League at the age of 14 and in 1961 was elected Secretary of the African Students’ Association. He was involved in underground activities after the banning of the ANC in 1960 until he left South Africa in 1962. He continued his studies in the United Kingdom (UK) and obtained his MA (Economics) at the University of Sussex. While in the UK, he mobilised the international student community against apartheid and worked at the London office of the ANC for several years. He also underwent military training in the then Soviet Union. From 1973 he worked in Botswana, Swaziland, Nigeria and Lusaka and became a member of the ANC’s National Executive Committee in 1975.
Between 1984 and 1989, he was Director of the ANC’s Department of Information. He led the organisation’s delegations, which met groups from inside South Africa in Dakar, Senegal and elsewhere. In 1989, he headed the delegation that held talks with the apartheid Government, which led to agreements on the unbanning of political organisations and the release of political prisoners. He also participated in negotiations preceding the adoption of South Africa’s Interim Constitution in 1993. Following the first democratic election in 1994, Mr Mbeki was appointed Executive Deputy President. In 1997, he was elected President of the ANC and in June 1999, after the country’s second democratic election, he succeeded Mr Nelson Mandela as President of South Africa. | |
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