Lindiwe Mabuza

Lindiwe Mabuza (born 13 August 1938 in Newcastle, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa) is a South African politician, diplomat, poet, academic, journalist, and cultural activist. She was an anti-Apartheid activist who went on to serve her country as a Member of the first democratically elected parliament of South Africa. She then proceeded to a career as a distinguished diplomat. She serves on the Advisory Board of Elders of the Ifa Lethu Foundation, which repatriates South African artworks. She is also a patron of Dramatic Need, a UK-based charity that promotes creative arts for children, and is an advisory Council Member of the Thabo Mbeki Foundation. She has also served as the Chairperson of the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund UK.

Lindiwe Mabuza
South African High Commissioner to the United Kingdom
In office
2001–2009
PresidentThabo Mbeki
Kgalema Motlanthe
Preceded byCheryl Carolus
Succeeded byZola Skweyiya
Personal details
Born (1938-08-13) 13 August 1938
Newcastle, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Political partyAfrican National Congress
ChildrenThembelihle Msibi
Alma materCollege of Grailville Community
Stanford University
University of Minnesota
OccupationPolitician, diplomat, poet, academic, journalist, activist

Early life and career

Mabuza was born in Newcastle, KwaZulu-Natal, in South Africa. She completed her high school in St Louis Betrand High School in Newcastle. She then went on attend Roma College in Lesotho and obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree. Owing to her struggle to find employment in apartheid South Africa, Mabuza moved to Swaziland and became a teacher of English and Zulu.[1] In 1964 she moved to the United States and enrolled at Stanford University where she completed a Masters degree in English. She went further to obtain her second master's degree in History majoring in American Studies from the University of Minnesota. In 1968 she became a lecturer in the Department of Sociology and the University of Minnesota. In 1969 she joined the University of Ohio as Assistant Professor of Literature and History.[2] Later in 1993 she obtained a Diploma in Diplomacy in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. Her personal experience of racial segregation in South Africa, which led her to leave South Africa, and her exposure to the plight of African Americans in the Civil Rights Movement prompted Mabuza to join the struggle for the emancipation of her people in South Africa and Africa as a whole. In 1975 she joined the African National Congress (ANC) and moved to Lusaka in Zambia. In 1977 she became Editor of Voice of Women, a feminist journal for women in the ANC. She was also a radio journalist and broadcaster in Radio Freedom, which was the ANC's radio station, broadcasting from Zambia to multiple African countries. She was also the Chairperson of the ANC's Cultural Committee.[3]

In 1979 the then ANC president Oliver Reginald Tambo assigned Mabuza to open ANC offices in Scandinavia and to become the ANC's Chief Representative to Scandinavian countries, residing in Stockholm, Sweden. Tambo reflected later in his speech to the ANC's women section in 1981 in Angola that "Comrade Lindiwe Mabuza cried and sobbed and ultimately collapsed on top of herself when she learnt she had been appointed ANC Chief Representative to the Scandinavian countries. But, looking at the record, could any man have done better?"[4] During her time in Sweden, she mobilised support for the ANC and raised funds for ANC work across the world, especially for exiled South Africans in Zambia. She also led campaigns and lobbied towards the isolation of South Africa through trade bans and boycotts. She forged strong relationships with Scandinavians and was very close to the Prime minister of Sweden, Olof Palme, who was a major supporter of the ANC and resistance to the apartheid government.[5] She had become such a formidable force against the apartheid government that on Monday, 8 September 1986, the ANC office was bombed with the hope of killing her and sabotaging the work she was doing.[6] By the time Mabuza left Scandinavia. she had been so successful that the international offices of the ANC that she managed had grown to include Finland, Denmark, and Norway.

in 1986, Mabuza was transferred from Sweden to the United States where she served as the ANC's Chief Representative. With the aid of the Swedes, Mabuza managed to open and run an office based in Washington, DC. She arrived in America shortly after the American government had imposed sanctions on Apartheid South Africa. She continued to lobby congress and to work with many American activists like Jesse Jackson, Harry Belafonte, Muhammad Ali, Jane Fonda and many others. She was instrumental in the many boycotts, rallies and other efforts to frustrate the apartheid government. Her efforts, with the help of other organizations and American colleges across America, led to Coca-Cola and many other such corporations withdrawing their investments from South Africa.[7] Later, after the political prisoners from Robben Island were released, including Nelson Mandela, Mabuza was key in organising Mandela's first visit to America after his release.

In democratic South Africa

Although Lindiwe Mabuza had spent many years in political exile, she was nominated into the first democratic parliament of South Africa serving under president Mandela. Her passion was still diplomacy and her party, now the new ANC government, knew this. She was then appointed as South African Ambassador to Germany in 1995. She was a celebrated diplomat in Germany because of her own efforts in human rights. A reception was held in her honour to mark her signing of the Goldene Buch in Karlsruhe Rathaus, an honour reserved only for heads of state. She also accompanied the German Chancellor Helmut Kohl on a major trade visit to South Africa.[8] In 1999, she became South African High Commissioner to Malaysia and Brunei and the Philippines. In 2001, she was appointed South African High Commissioner to the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, a post she held till 2010.

Poetry and writings

Mabuza started writing poetry when she was involved in "The Way Project" in the United States that tried to create programmes through which children can be kept off the streets. When she arrived in Zambia, she soon discovered that ANC women did not have a voice so she coedited an anthology of poems by ANC women titled Malibongwe! ANC Women: Poetry is their weapon in 1978. Selections of her poems also appear in Anta Sudan Katara Mberi and Cosmo Pieterse's anthology Speak Easy, Speak Free (1977) and her poetry is included in Barry Feinberg's anthology Poets to the People: South African Freedom Poem (1980) and in The Heinemann Book of African Women's Poetry (1995).[9]

Her own anthologies are:

  • Letter to Letta, 1991, which she titled after her dear friend the musician Letta Mbulu.[10]
  • Voices that Lead: Poems 1976-1996[11]
  • Footprints and fingerprints, published in 2008.[12]
  • To Sweden from ANC, poetry published 1987.[13]

In 2007, she published a children's book titled 'South African Animals' with illustrations by Alan Baker.[14]

Mabuza also coedited (with Pallo Jordan) the book Oliver Tambo Remembered, in honour of her mentor and friend Oliver Tambo. The book is a collection of essays by Tambo's friends and comrades. She also conceived the idea to compile a collection of essays on former South African President Thabo Mbeki, an idea leading to the bestseller titled The Thabo Mbeki I Know. Inspired by the 100th anniversary of Tambo's birth, she edited the volume Conversations with Uncle O. R. Tambo: Childhood Memories in Exile, a collection of letters by writers who were children at the time when Tambo was president of the ANC.[15]

Awards and honours
  • In 1997, at New York University, she was awarded the Yari Yari Award for her contribution to Human Rights and Literature.[16]
  • She was awarded the degree Doctor of Philosophy (Honoris Causa) in 1997 by the University of Durban-Westville in South Africa.
  • In 2003, she received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.[17]
  • In 2003, while serving as South African High Commissioner to the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, she was named by Diplomat Magazine as Diplomat of the Year.[18]
  • In 2014, President Jacob Zuma awarded her South Africa's highest decoration, the national Order of Ikhamanga, for her contribution to towards the eradication of the oppressive apartheid system through the arts.[19]

In 2017 Mabuza received the Lifetime Achievement Award for Arts Advocacy. This award was granted her by the Arts and Culture Trust of South Africa.

References
  1. Nolundi (2017-02-02). "Biography of Lindiwe Mabuza by Kayla Johansen". www.sahistory.org.za. Retrieved 2017-04-06.
  2. Refugees, United Nations High Commissioner for. "Mabuza, Lindiwe". UNHCR. Retrieved 2017-04-06.
  3. "Mabuza, Lindiwe 1938– - Dictionary definition of Mabuza, Lindiwe 1938– | Encyclopedia.com: FREE online dictionary". www.encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 2017-04-06.
  4. Anonymous (2011-04-04). "His Life and Legacy - Oliver Tambo". www.sahistory.org.za. Retrieved 2017-04-06.
  5. Sellström, Tor (2002). Liberation in Southern Africa: Regional and Swedish Voices : Interviews from Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, the Frontline and Sweden. Sweden: Nordic Africa Institute. pp. 134. ISBN 91-7106-5008.
  6. Anonymous (2011-03-16). "Diplomatic office of the ANC in Stockholm is bombed". www.sahistory.org.za. Retrieved 2017-04-06.
  7. "Mabuza, Lindiwe 1938– - Dictionary definition of Mabuza, Lindiwe 1938– | Encyclopedia.com: FREE online dictionary". www.encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 2017-04-06.
  8. Massaquoi, Hans J. (1996). "Lindiwe Mabuza South Africa's First Black Ambassador to Germany". Ebony Magazine: 53–58.
  9. Chipasula, Frank M. (2009). Bending the Bow: An Anthology of African Love Poetry. United States of America: SIU Press. p. 297. ISBN 978-0-8093-2842-0.
  10. Mabuza, Lindiwe (1991). Letter to Letta. United States: Skotaville Publishers. ISBN 9780947479640.
  11. Mabuza, Lindiwe (1998). Voices that Lead: Poems, 1976-1996. South Africa: Vivlia. ISBN 9781868670697.
  12. Mabuza, Lindiwe (2008). Footprints and fingerprints. South Africa: Picador Africa. ISBN 9781770100787.
  13. Mabuza, Lindiwe (1987). To Sweden from ANC. Sweden: Swedish Social Democratic Party.
  14. Mabuza, Lindiwe (2007). South African Animals. Tamarind. ISBN 9781870516853.
  15. Don Makatile, "Book recounts life of humble OR Tanbo", The Sunday Independent, 13 May 2018, via PressReader.
  16. "YARI YARI: BLACK WOMEN WRITERS AND THE FUTURE: An International Conference on Literature by Women of African Descent October 15-18, 1997". The Black Scholar. 29: 2–6. 1997. JSTOR 41058670.
  17. "Honorary graduates 2002/03 | The University of Edinburgh". www.ed.ac.uk. Retrieved 2017-04-06.
  18. "High Commissioner wins award | SA News". www.sanews.gov.za. Retrieved 2017-04-06.
  19. Mafika (2014-04-17). "South Africa honours its freedom heroes". Brand South Africa. Retrieved 2017-04-06.
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