22 Facts About Ayanda Dlodlo

Ayanda Dlodlo was born on 22 May 1963 and is a South African politician and former cabinet minister.

Ayanda Dlodlo was born in her grandmother's house in Soweto, Gauteng in South Africa, and had one sibling, a sister.

Ayanda Dlodlo's mother was a student nurse and her father was studying toward a Bachelor of Science; he later earned an education degree and became a school principal.

Ayanda Dlodlo attended a private school in Swaziland until, when she was a teenager, her parents divorced, and she and her mother returned to Johannesburg.

Ayanda Dlodlo received MK military training in Angola and later received military intelligence training in the Soviet Union.

Ayanda Dlodlo ultimately earned a higher certificate in shipping and transport management, a postgraduate diploma in business management, and a Master of Business Administration.

Ayanda Dlodlo remained in exile with the ANC until 1994, when apartheid was formally abolished.

Ayanda Dlodlo was director of a company called VIP Consulting Engineers, during the period in which the company had sanitation contracts with the government in Ekurhuleni, Gauteng.

Ayanda Dlodlo was director of strategic operations at the Directorate of Special Operations, commonly known as the Scorpions, a specialised unit in the National Prosecuting Authority, but resigned in 2004.

Ayanda Dlodlo was arrested in October 2006, but the charges against her were dropped in May 2007; she said she had expected it, given that the charges were "laughable".

Ayanda Dlodlo resigned from the Scorpions in 2004 to join the Gauteng provincial government, and became head of the provincial Department of Safety and Security.

At the conference, which took place in December 2007, Ayanda Dlodlo was herself elected to the ANC's National Executive Committee.

In May 2010, Ayanda Dlodlo was one of three members of an ANC disciplinary committee that found Julius Malema guilty of contravening aspects of the ANC constitution.

Whistleblower Vytjie Mentor alleged, in a Facebook post, that Ayanda Dlodlo had accepted a free luxury trip to Paris.

Pursuant to a complaint by opposition MP Phumzile van Damme, a parliamentary committee found that Ayanda Dlodlo had breached the parliamentary code of conduct and should be reprimanded.

Second, in 2017, the Democratic Alliance, the ANC's main opposition, condemned Ayanda Dlodlo for spending R1.5 million in public funds on two ministerial cars, both Audis.

When Zuma resigned in February 2018, Ayanda Dlodlo was appointed Minister of Public Service and Administration in the first cabinet of his successor, Cyril Ramaphosa, where she was tasked with restructuring the national public service.

Ayanda Dlodlo was in this position during the July 2021 civil unrest in South Africa, which led to vigorous public and political debate about alleged intelligence failures by state security agencies.

Ayanda Dlodlo later said that she felt she had been unfairly scapegoated.

However, in early April 2022, Ayanda Dlodlo resigned from the cabinet and the National Assembly to become an executive director on the board of the World Bank, with special responsibility for Angola, Nigeria, and South Africa.

Ayanda Dlodlo said she had handed in her resignation as early as October 2021, though Ramaphosa had not announced it until months later.

Ayanda Dlodlo is married and has at least one son, Thabang Mnisi.