Kgalema Motlanthe

He was born on 19 July 1949 at the Boksburg-Benoni Hospital. He grew up in Alexandra, Johannesburg, Transvaal (now Gauteng). His parents, Louis Mathakoe Motlanthe, a cleaner, and Masefako Sophia Madingoane (d. 2014), a domestic worker, married in 1946.

Motlanthe (also known as Mkhuluwa, the elder one) has two younger brothers, Tlatlane Ernest and Lekota Sydney.

Motlanthe's maternal grandfather, Kgalema Marcus Madingoane and his grandmother, Louisa Mmope Sehole lived in Apex, a squatter camp in Benoni East Rand Old Location where they moved to in search of work. Here, Madingoane became involved in community affairs and eventually became a Councillor in Apex. He was instrumental in founding the township of Daveyton in 1955 where he ran a funeral parlour and a general dealership.

When he was 11, his parents were forced to move from Alexandra to Meadowlands. He first attended school in Ga-Mothiba in the northern Transvaal (now Limpopo Province).

Motlanthe returned to Alexandra and enrolled in Grade 1 at an Anglican Missionary School. The school was eventually closed when the administration refused to implement Bantu Education. Then, he attended the Totomeng Lower primary School in Meadowlands and then went to Meadowlands Secondary School, walking several kilometres to and from school.

Motlanthe's parents were practising Christians, which influenced his outlook on life. He served as an altar boy and at one point intended to enter the Anglican priesthood. Family and friends described him as a gentle and kind person.

In 1964, the Anglican Church awarded him a bursary to attend St Christopher's in Swaziland to complete his secondary schooling and then enter the priesthood. His application for travel documents to the Bantu Affairs Department was turned down, and he was informed that he had to study in South Africa. He then enrolled at Orlando High School in Orlando, Soweto.

His political interest was aroused after reading a book by Anglican priest Trevor Huddleston, Naught for Your Comfort. The Black Panther Movement in the United States and the rising Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa also played a role in shaping his political awareness.

Whilst at high school, he worked part time at a bottle store in Hyde Park, Johannesburg. In 1969, he began work in the Johannesburg City Council, supervising liquor outlets in Soweto. Stan Nkosi, his closest friend and comrade, Siphiwe Nyanda, former minister of communications and George Nene, deputy director general in the foreign affairs department also worked in this unit at various times. Together they later joined the ANC's military wing Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK). During the seven years that he worked there, Motlanthe was able to engage in underground work such as going almost weekly to Manzini, Swaziland couriering ANC recruits for military training.

He attended the Anglican Missionary school now known as Pholoso Primary and matriculated from Orlando High School in Orlando, Soweto after his family was forcibly removed there in 1959.[9] The formative influence in his early years was the Anglican Church.[10] He served as an altar boy for many years and at one point thought of becoming a priest.

In the 1970s, while working for the Johannesburg City Council, he was recruited into Umkhonto we Sizwe, the paramilitary wing of the ANC. He formed part of a unit tasked with recruiting potential members for paramilitary training.[11] On 14 April 1976, he was arrested on terrorism charges and was kept in detention for 11 months at John Vorster Square, in central Johannesburg. In 1977, he was convicted of three charges under the Terrorism Act and sentenced to an effective 10 years' imprisonment on Robben Island, from 1977 to 1987.[12][13] According to the 1977 Survey of Race Relations, "they were alleged to have undergone training for sabotage, promoted ANC activities, and received explosives for sabotage. All pleaded not guilty. Mr Justice Human found Nkosi and Mothlanthe [sic] guilty and sentenced them to effective jail sentences of 10 years each. Mosoeu was acquitted."

On his years in prison:

"We were a community of people who ranged from the totally illiterate to people who could very easily have been professors at universities. We shared basically everything. The years out there were the most productive years in one's life, we were able to read, we read all the material that came our way, took an interest in the lives of people even in the remotest corners of this world. To me those years gave meaning to life."[10]

— Kgalema Motlanthe

Shortly after his release, he was elected Secretary-General of the National Union of Mineworkers. In January 1992, the Central Executive Committee elected him acting general secretary in January over Marcel Golding, and in 1997, he was elected Secretary-General of the ANC, replacing Ramaphosa.

Motlanthe was elected the secretary general of the ANC at its Mafikeng Conference in December 1997, with Mbeki as its president. He was responsible for ensuring that the ANC implemented and carried out its policies and programmes. He was and is committed to the notion that strict accountability by ANC officials must be followed. At the ANC National General Council (NGC) in Port Elizabeth, in 2000, he criticised lack of consultation and discussions between government and the ANC. There is a widely-held viewpoint from colleagues and those close to him that Mbeki seriously undermined him for years, but Motlanthe denies it.

On 25 September 2008, Motlanthe was elected by Parliament as the third post-apartheid President of South Africa. Chief Justice Pius Langa announced Motlanthe's election after a secret parliamentary ballot contested between Motlanthe and Joe Seremane from the opposition Democratic Alliance.[20] In the ballot, Motlanthe gained 269 votes from the 351 cast.[21]

Although he has been criticised for standing by Mbeki's "soft and non-confrontational" approach towards the Zimbabwean crisis, he was quite critical of Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front and Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change. Furthermore, his criticisms of emerging black capitalists and that Black Economic Empowerment was that it should be "restricted to one deal [per individual] and that what was needed was genuine economic transformation that benefitted the Black masses rather than creating an elite club of Black millionaires" has earned him the "resentment of budding Black capitalists."

Over HIV/AIDS, Motlanthe is accused of regurgitating Mbeki's now widely-discredited denialism. However, he changed his stance on ARVs following the government's decision of a mass rollout programme.

Motlanthe has expressed his desire to address AIDS in South Africa using conventional scientific approaches. He appointed Barbara Hogan to replace Mbeki's health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who had denounced anti-retroviral drugs as poisons and advised the use of olive oil, garlic, and beetroot by HIV-positive persons.[22] In early March 1998 he led the ANC's charge against the Medicines Control Council for refusing to allow the testing of Virodene on human subjects. He suggested that the MCC was acting under the sway of rival pharmaceutical manufacturers[10] saying "I surmise that the council is driven by other interests than concern for proper control of medicines".

Motlanthe caused some controversy in South Africa when he did not reinstate the Head of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), Vusi Pikoli in December 2008.[23] Pikoli, the head of the NPA, was suspended by Mbeki in 2007. Just prior to this Pikoli obtained an arrest warrant for the Commissioner of Police and head of Interpol, Jackie Selebi. The media speculated that Mbeki tried to shield Selebi. As President, Motlanthe recommended to Parliament that Pikoli be fired even though the [Frene] Ginwala Commission of Inquiry advised otherwise. Motlanthe was widely criticised for his action by the Parliamentary Opposition and the media. He strongly denied that he succumbed to political pressure from the ANC.

Motlanthe gave his first and only State of the Nation Address on 6 February 2009.[24]

In 1975, he married Mapula Mokate, from Sophiatown. She was a radiographer who used to work at Leratong Hospital in Mogale City and Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto. The couple are divorced and have three children; Kagiso, Kgomotso and Ntabiseng. They were separated before he ascended to the presidency in 2008.[27][28] He exchanged gifts with businesswoman Gugu Mtshali in March 2014 in preparation for a Gauteng wedding.[29] He will reportedly move into a "Bali-style" rented mansion in Houghton, Gauteng.[30] Motlanthe married Mtshali in May 2014. The wedding was attended by 300 guests including then-President Jacob Zuma.

• Cabinet of Kgalema Motlanthe

• Official profile at the presidency site
• "ANC Policy won't change"
• Who is Kgalema Motlanthe?
• Kgalema Motlanthe at Who's Who Southern Africa
• Kgalema Petrus Motlanthe at South African History Online