biography
| name: |
Mbeki, Thabo (Mvuyelwa)
|
pronunciation:
[mbekee]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1942– )
|
| biography:
| Leader of the African National Congress (ANC) from 1997, and president of South Africa (1999– ), born in Idutywa, SE South Africa. He joined the ANC Youth League as a teenager, and in 1959 was expelled from school for political activities. By the time his father, Govan Mbeki (1910–2001), was sentenced to life at the Rivonia Trial of 1964, Thabo was in exile. He then studied in England and the USSR. Elected to the National Executive Committee of the ANC in 1975, he became one of its most influential leaders. After the organization was unbanned in 1990, he returned to South Africa, and played a major role in the negotiations for a new political dispensation. In 1994 he was appointed first deputy president in Nelson Mandela's administration, and succeeded him in 1997 as president of the ANC, and in 1999 as president of South Africa. |
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