This is Part One of a two-part study group series. Both study groups will be on the political risks and realities for Africa of a world with an increasingly isolated Global North.
RSVP is required. Light snacks and refreshments will be provided.
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Lindiwe Mazibuko is a South African public leader, speaker and writer. She was the first black woman in South African history to be elected Leader of the Opposition in Parliament.
A graduate of the University of Cape Town in South Africa and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government in the United States, Lindiwe was an elected representative in South Africa’s National Assembly until May 2014, when she resigned from active politics in order to return to higher education.
Mazibuko is also the co-founder and Executive Director of Apolitical Foundation, a non-partisan movement to diversify public sector leadership around the world. The Foundation’s principal project is Apolitical Academy, a non-profit public leadership programme supporting the next generation of ethical political and public sector leaders in Africa, Europe and around the globe.
Mazibuko began her political career as a researcher in the parliamentary office of South Africa’s official opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA). She was later appointed the party's national media liaison in 2008 ahead of the South African General Elections.
She also decided to run for election as a Member of Parliament in 2008, aged 27 years - the fourth youngest candidate in South Africa to do so. She was elected in April 2009, and appointed the DA’s National Spokesperson and Shadow Deputy Minister for Communications soon after this. In 2010 she was appointed to the DA Shadow Cabinet where she was responsible for the Rural Development and Land Reform portfolio.
In 2011, aged 31, Lindiwe took the decision to run for election to the post of DA Parliamentary Leader and Leader of the Official Opposition in South Africa's National Assembly. Her principal platforms were better representation for South Africa’s increasingly youthful electorate and revitalizing the country’s stagnating parliamentary processes.
In October 2011, Mazibuko was elected Parliamentary Leader by her peers in the party’s 83-person caucus, making her the DA’s youngest ever-parliamentary leader, and the first black woman in South African history to be elected to the post of Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly.
During her term in office, Mazibuko successfully held the ruling African National Congress (ANC) accountable for its record in national government by bringing issues as diverse as clean government, youth unemployment, LGBTI rights, constitutionalism and gender equality to the floor of the Assembly.
She was also the first political leader to bring national attention to allegations that the South African president had misappropriated public funds for personal use. She successfully prosecuted a Constitutional Court case against the Speaker of the National Assembly, vindicating the right of all Members of Parliament to move a motion of no confidence in the President of the Republic. This precedent was instrumental in enabling successive opposition leaders to engage in effective parliamentary oversight over the South African Presidency.
In May 2014, at the end of her term, and following a successful electoral campaign in which the DA grew its share of the national vote from 16% in 2009 to 22%, Mazibuko announced that she would be taking a sabbatical from active politics. In May 2015, she graduated with a Master in Public Administration from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, where she was also an Edward S. Mason Fellow.
She has served as fellow of the Institute of Politics (IOP) at Harvard University and of the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS) in South Africa. She is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader (YGL), a Munich Young Leader with the Munich Security Conference and the Körber Foundation in Germany, and an advisory committee member at the UK government technology start-up, Apolitical Group Limited.
