78 Facts About Kgalema Motlanthe

Kgalema Motlanthe was elected ANC deputy president, on a slate aligned to Zuma, by the ANC's 2007 Polokwane conference.

Kgalema Motlanthe was widely understood to be a compromise candidate and to be leading a caretaker administration until the 2009 national election.

Kgalema Motlanthe made controversial changes at the National Prosecuting Authority, dismissing the National Director of Public Prosecutions, Vusi Pikoli, and assenting to legislation which disbanded the Scorpions, an elite anti-corruption unit.

Zuma was elected president in May 2009, and Kgalema Motlanthe was appointed his deputy.

Kgalema Motlanthe declined to seek re-election to the ANC National Executive Committee, and had already declined a nomination for re-election as ANC deputy president.

Kgalema Motlanthe was born on 19 July 1949 to a family in Alexandra, a township outside Johannesburg in the former Transvaal.

Kgalema Motlanthe is named for his maternal grandfather, Kgalema Madingoane, who was a councillor in Benoni and later a community leader in the newly established township of Daveyton.

Kgalema Motlanthe has two younger brothers, Tlatlane Ernest and Lekota Sydney.

Kgalema Motlanthe attended Pholosho Primary School, an Anglican missionary school in Alexandra, until his family was forcibly removed to Meadowlands, Soweto.

Kgalema Motlanthe therefore attended Orlando High School in Soweto, and he played soccer as a teenager.

Kgalema Motlanthe has said that the Anglican church was an important influence on his early development, especially the Community of the Resurrection sect to which Archbishop Trevor Huddleston belonged and which, during his childhood, was visible for its community work in the townships.

Kgalema Motlanthe was imprisoned on Robben Island for almost ten years, between August 1977 and April 1987.

ANC stalwart Andrew Mlangeni, who was on Robben Island with Kgalema Motlanthe, later said that he was instrumental in welcoming and providing political education to young prisoners, who arrived on the island in large numbers in the decade after the 1976 Soweto uprising.

Five years after his release, Kgalema Motlanthe spoke about the solidarity forged in prison, and described the period as "enriching":.

In June 1987, shortly after his release from prison, Kgalema Motlanthe became an education officer at the influential National Union of Mineworkers, which was then led by Cyril Ramaphosa.

At the NUM, Kgalema Motlanthe furthered his interest, born on Robben Island, in political education.

Kgalema Motlanthe was chairperson of the ANC's PWV region for a brief period, between early 1990, when the ANC was unbanned, and September 1991, when he stepped down to concentrate on his NUM work.

In January 1992, with Ramaphosa's endorsement, Kgalema Motlanthe was elected by the NUM central committee to replace him as acting general secretary.

At the ANC's 50th National Conference in December 1997, Kgalema Motlanthe was elected unopposed as ANC secretary general, reportedly with the support of senior ANC leaders including Walter Sisulu and Nelson Mandela.

Kgalema Motlanthe travelled from one village to another but he could not find one.

Kgalema Motlanthe was associated with implementing the early phases of the ANC's cadre deployment and Black Economic Empowerment policies.

Kgalema Motlanthe had been identified as one of the key leftist leaders who was dissatisfied with the new Growth, Employment and Redistribution policy, and he later told Gevisser that, at the meetings, Mbeki had indeed managed to sway his position on GEAR.

In October 2004, in a speech to the Black Management Forum, Kgalema Motlanthe delivered what was perceived as "an attack" on BEE, a cornerstone of the ANC's economic and transformation policy.

An investigation by the intelligence inspector-general confirmed that the emails were fake, but Kgalema Motlanthe reportedly rejected this conclusion and, in a meeting of the ANC National Executive Committee, demanded that the ANC conduct an internal investigation.

Kgalema Motlanthe's last act as secretary general was to deliver a memorable organisational report to the conference, criticising various wings of the party and especially the outgoing National Executive Committee, which he said had failed to resolve problems relating to factionalism and branch-level fraud.

Kgalema Motlanthe later condemned the practice of voting for candidates on slates, saying that he had held "as far back as Polokwane" that it was harmful to internal democracy in the party.

Nevertheless, it is understood that Kgalema Motlanthe ran on the Zuma-aligned slate of candidates, with Dlamini-Zuma as Mbeki's preferred candidate, though he was at the top of the pro-Mbeki camp's list of recommended candidates for the National Executive Committee.

Similarly, Alec Russell of the English Financial Times reported that Kgalema Motlanthe had fallen out with Mbeki and was aligned to Zuma in the Zuma-Mbeki rivalry.

At that point, Kgalema Motlanthe was effectively unemployed, having vacated the full-time position of secretary general; and the appointment was intended to facilitate the transfer of power from Mbeki's administration to Zuma and to Kgalema Motlanthe himself, who had never served in government before but who was expected to become national deputy president in 2009.

Kgalema Motlanthe was appointed the second Minister in the Presidency, as well as Leader of Government Business.

Ultimately, Kgalema Motlanthe served as a minister for just over two months.

Backbenchers at the parliamentary session which elected Kgalema Motlanthe sang pro-Zuma songs, but it was reported that his appointment had broad support within the ANC and in the business community, and even among opposition parties.

In Parliament, opposition politician Pieter Mulder of the Freedom Front Plus alluded to the possibility that Kgalema Motlanthe might come to challenge Zuma's dominance:.

Kgalema Motlanthe announced his cabinet, having largely retained the composition of Mbeki's cabinet, and even having re-appointed several ministers, including respected finance minister Trevor Manuel, who had resigned after Mbeki's recall.

Kgalema Motlanthe was president for seven and a half months, between 25 September 2008 and 9 May 2009.

Kgalema Motlanthe gave his first and only State of the Nation address on 6 February 2009, and in his speech he, "as expected, refrained from announcing any new plans," given that an election was scheduled for later that year.

Ahead of the 2005 Zimbabwean parliamentary election, Kgalema Motlanthe had delivered what was considered the ANC's "first public criticism" of Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF regime in Zimbabwe.

Once inaugurated as president, Kgalema Motlanthe asked Mbeki to remain in his role as mediator between ZANU-PF and Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change, and his government "[threw] its weight behind" the resulting Zimbabwean power-sharing agreement.

Kgalema Motlanthe, accompanied by Mbeki, met several times with Mugabe and Tsvangirai to try to convince them to implement the agreement and form a government.

Kgalema Motlanthe retained Mbeki's stance that Mugabe had to be installed at the head of any power-sharing arrangement, but there were occasions on which he was critical of the ZANU-PF government.

Kgalema Motlanthe's administration provided financial and diplomatic support to the Zimbabwean unity government when it was ultimately formed in February 2009.

In January 2009, Kgalema Motlanthe signed into law two bills which disbanded the Scorpions, the elite anti-corruption unit of the National Prosecuting Authority.

In 2011, the Constitutional Court ruled that the legislation disbanding the Scorpions had been unconstitutional, but Kgalema Motlanthe has defended the decision as recently as August 2020.

On 8 December 2008, Kgalema Motlanthe fired the head of the NPA, the National Director of Public Prosecutions Vusi Pikoli.

Pikoli challenged his dismissal in court, but Kgalema Motlanthe continued to defend his decision, and Pikoli settled out of court with Zuma's government in November 2009.

Kgalema Motlanthe declined and, adhering to "the party line," said that criminal investigations, which he promised were ongoing, were the correct tool for probing the deal.

However, in January 2009, Kgalema Motlanthe reiterated his and the ANC's support for Zuma, and said that Zuma would stand as the ANC's presidential candidate even if his corruption charges were reinstated.

Kgalema Motlanthe chaired the inter-ministerial committee on the 2010 FIFA World Cup, which was held in South Africa.

However, some suspected that Kgalema Motlanthe was increasingly "frozen out" of important official business by Zuma, especially after he challenged Zuma for the ANC presidency in 2012.

In September 2010, the ANC's National General Council resolved that Parliament should begin the process of setting up a state-regulated media appeals tribunal; the next month, following a summit with the South African National Editors' Forum, Kgalema Motlanthe announced a reversal of this position, and said that the media would be given a chance to review its own self-regulatory mechanisms first.

Kgalema Motlanthe was perceived as having "stronger democratic tendencies" than others in the cabinet on freedom of expression issues.

In November 2011, Kgalema Motlanthe told the press that there could be "a meeting point" between the government and the bill's opponents over the public interest clause.

Kgalema Motlanthe acknowledged as valid the press's argument that any public interest defence would have to be tested by the courts, and promised that the bill would not be "rammed through" through Parliament by the ANC.

Kgalema Motlanthe had himself been critical of Malema's conduct in the past.

Indeed, they had had a major public spat in 2008, when Kgalema Motlanthe criticised Malema for saying that he was willing to "kill for Zuma" and criticised the broader Youth League for its verbal attacks on the judiciary.

In October 2012, the Sowetan reported that, in a meeting with the SACP and unions at which Zuma was present, Kgalema Motlanthe had expressed disagreement with how Zuma had handled the conflict with Malema, arguing that the ANC should have met with the Youth League to discuss their grievances.

Indeed, Kgalema Motlanthe was a staunch adherent to ANC norms which disapproved of overt campaigning for party-political leadership positions.

Kgalema Motlanthe told journalists that he was "agonising" over his nomination.

The ANC's influential Tripartite Alliance partners, the SACP and COSATU, supported Zuma's presidency but wanted Kgalema Motlanthe to remain deputy president.

On 12 March 2014, shortly before the 2014 general election, Kgalema Motlanthe announced his resignation from government and from Parliament.

Two months later, presenting a eulogy at the funeral of Ahmed Kathrada, his friend and an ANC stalwart, Kgalema Motlanthe received a standing ovation when he quoted from a letter sent to Zuma by Kathrada in 2016, in which Kathrada had asked Zuma to step down from the presidency.

Kgalema Motlanthe is presumed to be allied to Ramaphosa, who is national and ANC president, although in 2019 he told the Sunday Times that the ANC's condition had deteriorated since Ramaphosa's election as ANC president.

Kgalema Motlanthe remains active in the ANC, and he campaigned door-to-door for the ANC in Soweto ahead of the 2016 local elections.

The ANC's O R Tambo School of Leadership ultimately was not established until 2019, but Motlanthe has indeed been appointed its chairperson.

Kgalema Motlanthe chaired the ANC's internal electoral committee in the run-up to the 2021 local elections, overseeing the selection of the party's electoral candidates.

The Kgalema Motlanthe Foundation was established in 2018, with a mission statement encompassing socioeconomic development, access to knowledge and education, and human rights and social inclusion in South Africa and in Africa more broadly.

In 2017, Kgalema Motlanthe chaired the High Level Panel on the Assessment of Key Legislation and the Acceleration of Fundamental Change, a government panel which made significant findings on land reform, leading to the Pietermaritzburg High Court's 2021 finding against the Ingonyama Trust.

Kgalema Motlanthe has been a member of the Global Commission on Drug Policy since March 2019.

Kgalema Motlanthe joined the board of Ivanhoe Mines as a non-executive director in April 2018.

Kgalema Motlanthe is a trustee of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, and on 23 January 2021 the foundation announced that its top executives would be stepping down, pending a misconduct investigation, and that Motlanthe and two other trustees would lead the foundation in the interim.

In journalist Stephen Grootes's phrase, the "conventional wisdom" became that Kgalema Motlanthe had been "involved" in the deals.

The report was widely viewed as exonerating Kgalema Motlanthe: Donen rejected the Volcker Committee's views and concluded that Kgalema Motlanthe's intentions had been innocent.

In July 2005, while Kgalema Motlanthe was secretary general, the Sunday Times reported that the state-owned Land Bank had funded a black economic empowerment deal from which Kgalema Motlanthe was set to profit.

Kgalema Motlanthe denied the allegation and asked the Public Protector to investigate; both he and Mtshali were cleared of wrongdoing.

Kgalema Motlanthe is known for his restrained, measured demeanour, although his friends inside the ANC report that "he can be a great joker" and that he frequently defused bad moods among his Robben Island cohorts.

Kgalema Motlanthe is an intellectual of note, a comrade whose door is always open.

Kgalema Motlanthe possesses great wit which he unleashes with a dry sense of humour.

Many commentators agree that Kgalema Motlanthe appeared to harbour little personal ambition for political advancement.