31 Facts About Baleka Mbete

Baleka Mbete was born on 24 September 1949 and is a South African politician who was the Deputy President of South Africa from September 2008 to May 2009.

Baleka Mbete was the Speaker of the National Assembly for two non-consecutive terms from 2004 to 2008 and from 2014 to 2019.

Baleka Mbete served as Deputy Speaker between 1996 and 2004.

Baleka Mbete was elected to the National Assembly in the first post-apartheid elections in 1994 and served in her seat until 2019, with the exception of a hiatus from 2009 to 2014.

Baleka Mbete's rise through the institution began in 1996, when she was elected as Deputy Speaker, and continued during the third democratic Parliament, when she succeeded Frene Ginwala as the second Speaker.

Baleka Mbete left her parliamentary seat again after the 2019 general election, though she remained active in the ANC Women's League.

Baleka Mbete was a member of the ANC National Executive Committee from 1994 to 2022.

Baleka Mbete was born on 24 September 1949 to a Hlubi family in Clermont, a township in Durban in the former Natal Province.

Baleka Mbete spent part of her childhood with her grandmother in the Northern Transvaal, where she attended pre-school.

Baleka Mbete later lost his job because of his affiliation with the South African Communist Party.

Baleka Mbete's mother was a nurse, and she was the second child and eldest daughter in the family.

In exile, Baleka Mbete joined the anti-apartheid African National Congress.

Baleka Mbete taught at a high school in Mbabane, Swaziland until 1977, when she moved to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Baleka Mbete was regional secretary for the Women's Section in Tanzania from 1978 to 1981.

Baleka Mbete returned to South Africa from exile in June 1990.

At the league's first elective conference in April 1991, held in Kimberley, Baleka Mbete was elected as secretary-general of the league, serving under president Gertrude Shope.

Baleka Mbete served a single term in the position: at the second elective conference in December 1993, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula was elected to succeed her.

In 1995, Baleka Mbete was appointed as chair of the ANC's parliamentary caucus and as a member of the Presidential Panel on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Baleka Mbete was quoted as saying that she was too busy to wait in a queue for her driving test, although she later denied having said this.

The scandal led to a broader investigation into corruption into the Mpumalanga traffic department and to the dismissal of a provincial minister, though Baleka Mbete was not charged with wrongdoing and maintained that she had been "caught up in a web of impropriety of which I was unaware".

Baleka Mbete was elected unopposed to the office on 23 April 2004, with Gwen Mahlangu as her deputy.

Baleka Mbete publicly demonstrated support for Tony Yengeni, an ANC politician who was convicted of defrauding Parliament in 2003; she even accompanied Yengeni to Pollsmoor Prison in 2006 when he reported to serve his prison sentence.

However, Baleka Mbete maintained that she was committed to strengthening Parliament and its committees, saying that she had an inherited "an institution that was a rubber stamp".

In January 2006, Baleka Mbete chartered a jet, at a cost of R471,900, to attend the inauguration of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as President of Liberia.

Baleka Mbete tendered his resignation to Mbete's office the following day.

Baleka Mbete returned to an ANC seat in the National Assembly in the 2014 general election, and the party nominated her to return to her prior office as Speaker of the National Assembly.

On 10 September 2014, five opposition parties, including the Democratic Alliance and Economic Freedom Fighters, stated that they planned to submit a motion of no confidence in Baleka Mbete, and claimed that she could not simultaneously serve as chairwoman of the ANC and as Speaker of the National Assembly.

In March 2016, the Constitutional Court held, in Economic Freedom Fighters v Speaker of the National Assembly, that the National Assembly under Baleka Mbete's stewardship had breached the South African Constitution by undermining rather than implementing the Public Protector's Nkandla report.

Baleka Mbete did not run for re-election as national chairperson at the conference and did not appear on the ballot paper for any top leadership position, but she was re-elected to the National Executive Committee.

Ahead of the 2019 general election, Baleka Mbete told the Sowetan that she did not know "what's coming in the next couple of months".

In March 2022, Baleka Mbete told Radio 702 that she was "done with politics".