Democracy and Renaissance in Africa: In Search of an Pax Africana (Lecture Series 81)

Mbeki Thabo is president of South Africa. A political leader and statesman. Mbeki has for many years, been an activist of the African National Congress (ANC). He was born in Idutywa, Transkei on June 18, 1942, one of the four children of Epianette and Govan Mbeki. He attended primary school at Butterworth and high school at Lovedale, Alice.

Mbeki studied at the University of London and University of Sussex, both in the United Kingdom where he earned a Master of Arts Degree in Economics in 1966. After a military training in the Soviet Union in 1970, Mbeki worked for the ANC’s operational bases in Africa and Europe until the banning of the congress in 1990, when returned to South Africa.

He was a negotiator and ANC spokesman in the discussions of non-racial democratic rule within the framework of the convention for a Democratic South Africa, CODESA. After the victory of the ANC in the first multi-racial elections in the country. Thabo became the first Deputy President in South Africa on May 10, 1994.