82 Facts About Mzwanele Manyi

Mzwanele Manyi was born on 20 January 1964 and is a South African businessman, political figure, and former government spokesperson.

Mzwanele Manyi gained attention for his leadership of the Black Management Forum, where he advocated for the advancement of black professionals in South Africa's corporate sector.

Mzwanele Manyi served as the Chief Executive Officer of the Government Communication and Information System before purchasing The New Age newspaper and the ANN7 News Channel.

Active in the African National Congress and later the Economic Freedom Fighters, Mzwanele Manyi became a significant figure in South Africa's political landscape.

South African journalist Mandy Rossouw said that Mzwanele Manyi took the BMF "from a garden-variety pro-transformation organisation to one that every television-watching South African knows about".

Mzwanele Manyi was a strong proponent of the government's fledgling Black Economic Empowerment policies.

Mzwanele Manyi had openly endorsed the party ahead of the general election earlier that year.

Mzwanele Manyi said that there was no reason that he should renounce his BMF office, because he had already held it when he was appointed to his government position.

The BMF's annual general meeting declined to remove Mzwanele Manyi but appointed a panel to consider his fitness to hold office.

Mzwanele Manyi explained that he offered the diplomats a presentation on BEE to clarify its purpose and implementation, aiming to assist them in understanding the policy's role in South Africa's economic framework.

Mzwanele Manyi maintained that his offer was made in good faith to support the Norwegian delegation in navigating South Africa's economic landscape.

Over a year later, after Mzwanele Manyi had left the Department of Labour, Public Protector Thuli Madonsela investigated a related complaint.

The report mentioned that during the meeting, Mzwanele Manyi had offered the Norwegian delegation an opportunity to pay the BMF for BEE training, which could be seen as an inappropriate use of his government position to benefit a private organization.

Mzwanele Manyi argued that his advice was intended to be pro bono and that the ambassador had misunderstood his offer to provide assistance with BEE.

In early June 2010, Mzwanele Manyi was placed on precautionary suspension by the Ministry of Labour.

In later years, Mzwanele Manyi asserted that he remained a salaried employee on precautionary suspension during this period, indicating that his employment status was never fully resolved.

Mzwanele Manyi maintained that his contributions to public service continued despite the controversy, underscoring his resilience in navigating the challenging political landscape.

At the time of his transfer, Mzwanele Manyi chose not to comment on the details surrounding his departure from the Department of Labour, opting for a measured response amid ongoing speculation.

On 2 February 2011, the office of President Zuma announced that Mzwanele Manyi would be appointed, with immediate effect, as the director-general of the Government Communication and Information System, in which capacity he would serve as official spokesman for the cabinet.

One of the biggest controversies of Mzwanele Manyi's tenure began in late February 2011, less than a month after his appointment to GCIS.

Amid a broader political row about employment equity legislation, the trade union Solidarity drew attention to remarks that Mzwanele Manyi had made while still labour director-general during a March 2010 television appearance on KykNet's Robinson Regstreeks.

Mzwanele Manyi suggested that Coloured people could overcome this difficulty by moving to the provinces where Coloured people were under-represented, because businesses in those provinces would have a high demand for Coloured workers to meet employment equity quotas.

The opposition Freedom Front Plus called for Mzwanele Manyi to be fired, as did the South African Municipal Workers' Union.

The opposition Democratic Alliance said that Mzwanele Manyi's remarks implied that government's employment equity policy amounted to "an attempt at social engineering on a scale not seen since the darkest days of apartheid" and amounted to "crude racism".

The saga became memorable partly because of the ferocious response of Trevor Manuel, a struggle stalwart then serving as a Minister in the Presidency, who published an open letter in the Mercury in which he accused Manyi of being "a racist in the mould of H F Verwoerd".

The forum said that this would allow Mzwanele Manyi to concentrate on his new government responsibilities, as well as help prepare for a smooth leadership transition when Mzwanele Manyi's BMF term ended in October 2012.

The BMF became involved in Busa's governance: in mid-2011, Beeld reported that Mzwanele Manyi had arrived uninvited at a meeting of Busa management to insist that BMF should have a say in the appointment of Busa's new CEO, though Busa said that the meeting had been "fully procedural".

In late March 2011, Mzwanele Manyi told City Press that the government would launch its own newspaper, a revamped version of the existing government magazine, Vuk'uzenzele, which was currently published every two months.

In June 2011, weeks after announcing the Vuk'unzenzele initiative and still in his first six months in office, Mzwanele Manyi announced that cabinet had resolved to centralise all government media buying under GCIS.

Mzwanele Manyi said that centralisation would allow GCIS to "monitor and enforce adherence to the government brand" and to realise economies of scale, directing the advertising budget to media outlets where the government would get the most "bang for its buck".

Mzwanele Manyi said that the problem long predated his arrival at GCIS.

Mzwanele Manyi was long remembered for this remark, which critics said exemplified his abrasive communications style.

Mzwanele Manyi continued at the head of GCIS until mid-2012, and in January of that year, he was additionally appointed by Zuma to a three-year term on the five-person board of the Media Development and Diversity Agency.

On 27 August 2012, the expiry of Mzwanele Manyi's contract was formally announced, and he departed the GCIS office.

Mzwanele Manyi, who went on to become an employee and prominent defender of the Guptas, was implicated in several respects, but his tenure at GCIS, in particular, was investigated by the Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State Capture.

One central point of discussion was the circumstances under which Mzwanele Manyi had entered GCIS in 2011, unseating his respected predecessor, Themba Maseko, who later blew the whistle on state capture.

Williams additionally testified that Mzwanele Manyi had changed GCIS's media procurement processes, requiring that he, rather than the department's bid adjudication committee, would sign off on tender processing, and that both the media-buying division and the internal audit unit would report directly to him.

Mzwanele Manyi said that he had dismantled the bid committee and sidelined Williams in the oversight of internal audit precisely because Williams and the bid committee had been implicated in procurement irregularities.

The Zondo Commission, in its first installment of the final report released in January 2022, unequivocally rejected Mzwanele Manyi's defense regarding his actions during his tenure as Chief Executive Officer of the Government Communication and Information System.

Consequently, Mzwanele Manyi was identified as a "facilitator" of state capture, and GCIS under his leadership was labeled an "enabler" of the corrupt activities linked to the Gupta family's influence over the Zuma administration.

Mzwanele Manyi argued that the commission's findings were influenced by his later role as the spokesperson for former President Jacob Zuma, whom he referred to as "the most-hated person" in South Africa.

Mzwanele Manyi maintained that his real "crime" was his association with Zuma, rather than any misconduct during his time at GCIS, suggesting that the narrative surrounding state capture had been manipulated to unfairly target him.

Mzwanele Manyi vacated the BMF presidency in October 2012, two months after leaving GCIS; Shell SA's Bonang Mohale was elected unopposed to succeed him.

However, Mzwanele Manyi remained prominent in several other civil society organisations, in the media, and as prolific Twitter user.

Mzwanele Manyi said he had no recollection of the emails and later told CapeTalk that there was nothing untoward about them.

In May 2013, Mzwanele Manyi was appointed as a senior manager at Rand Water, a public water utility, with responsibility for strategy.

Mzwanele Manyi remained a board member at the Media Development and Diversity Agency until October 2014, when he was appointed as a special adviser to Minister Muthambi.

Mzwanele Manyi held the ministry position simultaneously with the Rand Water post.

In November 2017, a week after the Sunday Times reported that Mzwanele Manyi had sent his CV to the Guptas, former Minister of Public Service and Administration Ngoako Ramatlhodi told the same newspaper that he had blocked an attempt by Mosebenzi Zwane, a Gupta-linked minister, to have Mzwanele Manyi hired as director-general in the Department of Mineral Resources in 2016.

In 2013, Mzwanele Manyi became the founding president of a new organisation, the Progressive Professionals Forum.

From his PPF platform, Mzwanele Manyi remained an outspoken advocate for so-called radical economic transformation.

In January 2017, Mzwanele Manyi announced that the PPF was "not convinced" about the merits of constitutional democracy and supported a "discussion" about a possible transition to pure majoritarian democracy under parliamentary sovereignty.

Controversially, Mzwanele Manyi argued that the South African Constitution had been introduced during the post-apartheid transition by the Afrikaner Broederbond, who benefitted from constitutional democracy because it limited the democratic government's ability to effect structural economic change.

Mzwanele Manyi reprised this argument on several occasions, and additionally argued in March 2017 that ANC policies, including the Public Finance Management system, had been "infiltrated" and now served white monopoly capital.

In one example derided by columnists, Mzwanele Manyi criticised a 2017 tax increase for South Africa's top earners, saying that a heavy income tax on earnings above R1.5 million favoured white monopoly capital and disadvantaged the black middle class.

Mzwanele Manyi spearheaded the PPF's vociferous opposition to the Financial Intelligence Centre Amendment Bill, which updated anti-money laundering measures to meet international standards.

Mzwanele Manyi argued that the bill was prejudicial to the ANC's black donors, who he said would be persecuted as politically exposed persons.

In late April 2017, Mzwanele Manyi told the press that he was unbothered by the public perception that he was a Gupta associate, because the Guptas had not been found guilty of any wrongdoing, except the crime of challenging the dominance of white monopoly capital.

Mzwanele Manyi was active in the Black Business Council, and in late September 2016 he was elected as the council's head of policy, serving under BBC president Danisa Baloyi.

Mzwanele Manyi remained in the policy role for only six months, stepping down in late March 2017.

Mzwanele Manyi remained a member of the BBC national council in his capacity as a PPF representative.

Mzwanele Manyi said he would lodge complaints against AngloGold Ashanti and its chairman, Sipho Pityana, in response to Pityana's call for business leaders to take a stand against the ANC and demand Zuma's removal from office.

Mzwanele Manyi denied any direct links to or funding from Bell Pottinger.

In June 2018, Afro Voice staff told the press that the newspaper had ceased production, and in July, Mzwanele Manyi applied to liquidate the newspaper.

In court papers, Mzwanele Manyi said that the newspaper's revenues had declined to the cancellation of state contracts and negative perceptions of the Guptas, while operations had been negatively affected by the collapse of VBS Mutual Bank, the custodian of the newspaper's operational bank accounts.

Afro Worldview ceased to air the following month; Mzwanele Manyi refused to comment "on Afro Worldview business on any issue whatsoever".

In June 2021, former President Zuma's daughter, Dudu Zuma-Sambudla, announced that Manyi had been appointed as official spokesman to her father and his foundation, the Jacob G Zuma Foundation.

Zuma had been removed from the presidency in 2018 and was facing revived corruption charges, and Mzwanele Manyi was to provide Zuma's "side of the story" in the trial and all other matters.

Formerly a member of the governing African National Congress, Mzwanele Manyi announced in January 2019 that he would join the African Transformation Movement, a party founded in 2018 that became closely associated with supporters of Zuma and of so-called radical economic transformation.

At the press conference where he announced his decision, Mzwanele Manyi said that the ANC was "sabotaging" itself, particularly in its apparent lack of will to implement land expropriation without compensation and other transformative measures.

Mzwanele Manyi said that he would sue for defamation and that, "AADC is my own creation, my own party and I will prove that by shutting it down".

Mzwanele Manyi was appointed to the ATM's national executive committee and as the party's head of policy.

In May 2023, ahead of the next year's general election, Mzwanele Manyi announced that he was leaving the ATM to join the Economic Freedom Fighters, another opposition party.

Mzwanele Manyi said that he was leaving the ATM amicably and hoped to act as a bridge between the two parties.

Mzwanele Manyi explained that, because the EFF was a larger party than the ATM, "I have decided that I can serve South Africa better in an organization like the EFF".

On 6 June 2023, it was reported that Mzwanele Manyi had selected by the EFF to represent the party in the National Assembly.

Mzwanele Manyi was sworn in the following day in a ceremony presided over by Speaker Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula.

In mid-August 2024, Mzwanele Manyi made a significant political move by resigning from the Economic Freedom Fighters.

On Monday, 12 August 2024, Mzwanele Manyi quietly tendered his resignation from the EFF, a decision that was followed by the resignation of former EFF Deputy President Floyd Shivambu on Thursday, 15 August 2024.

Mzwanele Manyi now rejects the name wholeheartedly as a matter of decolonial principle, and told the Sunday Times in 2017:.

Mzwanele Manyi married Nomaphelo, known as Stella, in around 1985, and they have three children together.

Mzwanele Manyi is a lay preacher at the Bantu Church of Christ.