16 Facts About Mavivi Myakayaka-Manzini

Mavivi Myakayaka-Manzini was a member of the National Executive Committee of the African National Congress between 1994 and 2007 and she was deputy president of the ANC Women's League between 2003 and 2008.

Yvette Lillian Mavivi Myakayaka was born on 19 January 1956 in Alexandra on the outskirts of Johannesburg in what was then the Transvaal and spent most of her childhood in Soweto.

Mavivi Myakayaka-Manzini's parents were teachers and were members of the African National Congress until it was banned by the apartheid government in 1960.

Mavivi Myakayaka-Manzini became politically active as a teenager in about 1973, joining the Black Consciousness-aligned South African Students' Movement while still in high school.

Mavivi Myakayaka-Manzini studied political science, sociology, and development studies at the University of Zambia and received a Bachelor's degree in 1979.

Mavivi Myakayaka-Manzini broadcast on the ANC's Radio Freedom and was a founding member of the Congress of African Women, later known as the Pan African Women's Congress.

In 1997, Mavivi Myakayaka-Manzini applied for amnesty from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in relation to her work for the ANC in exile.

In South Africa's first fully democratic election in 1994, Mavivi Myakayaka-Manzini was elected as a Member of Parliament, representing the ANC.

Mavivi Myakayaka-Manzini left Parliament in 1999, in her account because, once the new Constitution had been finalised, she "felt like I have done my job".

Mavivi Myakayaka-Manzini took up work at the international relations desk at Luthuli House, the ANC's new headquarters; she was head of the desk by 2000 and remained in that position in October 2007.

Simultaneously, Mavivi Myakayaka-Manzini served three consecutive terms on the ANC National Executive Committee, gaining election in 1994, in 1997, and in 2002.

In 2007, at the party conference which removed Mbeki from the ANC presidency, Mavivi Myakayaka-Manzini lost her seat on the National Executive Committee; she had stood for re-election but did not achieve enough votes.

Mavivi Myakayaka-Manzini remained active in activism for women and was a senior member of the ANC Women's League.

Mavivi Myakayaka-Manzini became the inaugural spokesperson of the Progressive Women's Movement of South Africa when it was launched in July 2006.

In 2010, Baleka Mbete, by then the national chairperson of the ANC, said that she lobbied for Mavivi Myakayaka-Manzini to become Director-General in the new Department of Women, Youth, Children and Persons with Disabilities, but that Mavivi Myakayaka-Manzini had been earmarked for a diplomatic role.

Mavivi Myakayaka-Manzini remained involved in the ANC; she was appointed to the seven-member appeals committee of the party's Integrity Commission in 2021.