36 Facts About Panyaza Lesufi

Andrek "Panyaza" Lesufi was born on 4 September 1968 and is a South African politician who was appointed the seventh Premier of Gauteng in October 2022.

Panyaza Lesufi was previously Member of the Executive Council for Education in the Gauteng provincial government between May 2014 and October 2022, with the exception of a two-day stint as MEC for Finance in May 2019.

Panyaza Lesufi was first elected to the Gauteng Provincial Legislature in 2014.

Panyaza Lesufi is a member of the African National Congress and has served on its Gauteng Provincial Executive Committee since 2007; he was appointed the party's Provincial Chairperson in June 2022.

Panyaza Lesufi is a member of the South African Communist Party and as well as a member of ANC's National Executive Committee.

Andrek Panyaza Lesufi was born on 4 September 1968 in Edenvale, then part of South Africa's Transvaal Province and now part of Gauteng.

Panyaza Lesufi's family relocated to Tembisa after they were forcibly removed from Edenvale under the apartheid-era Group Areas Act.

Panyaza Lesufi was given the nickname "Panyaza" because of his love of football.

Panyaza Lesufi attended Tlamatlama Lower Primary School and Tshepisa Higher Primary School and he matriculated from Boitumelong Senior Secondary School in Tembisa, where he became involved in student politics.

Panyaza Lesufi studied at the University of Natal and later obtained a Master's degree in business administration.

Panyaza Lesufi was a member of various Congress-aligned students' organisations, including the Congress of South African Students, the South African Student Congress, and the Tembisa Student Congress.

Panyaza Lesufi managed outreach at the Tembisa Careers Centre and worked in non-governmental and community organisations, such as the Community Policing Forum and National Education Crisis Committee, which were aligned to the United Democratic Front and later were part of the Mass Democratic Movement.

Panyaza Lesufi was detained twice for his activism, in 1989 at Modderbee Prison for defying the prevailing state of emergency regulations, and in 1995 at Durban City Prison.

Panyaza Lesufi was later a spokesperson for the National Prosecuting Authority.

Panyaza Lesufi served on a task team appointed by the national Minister of Social Development, Zola Skweyiya, to establish the South African Social Security Agency, launched in 2005, and worked for the Minister of Police, Nathi Mthethwa, in connection with the establishment of the Hawks in 2008.

Panyaza Lesufi was named Member of the Executive Council for Education in the provincial government of Gauteng Premier David Makhura.

Panyaza Lesufi was re-elected to the legislature in the 2019 general election, this time ranked second on the ANC's party list.

From November 2019 to June 2020, Panyaza Lesufi served simultaneously as acting MEC for Social Development, until Nomathemba Mokgethi was appointed to replace the late Thuliswa Nkabinde-Khawe.

At the ANC's next provincial conference in 2010, Panyaza Lesufi ran unsuccessfully for the position of Provincial Secretary, coming third in an election in which he won 197 votes against Pule Mlambo's 200 and David Makhura's 485.

Panyaza Lesufi won the position narrowly, beating another MEC, Lebogang Maile, by only 22 votes, earning 623 votes to Maile's 601.

Panyaza Lesufi entered the contest to succeed him, again opposing Lebogang Maile.

On 27 June 2022, at the provincial conference in Benoni, Panyaza Lesufi was elected Provincial Chairperson of the Gauteng ANC, receiving 575 votes to Maile's 543.

Panyaza Lesufi's running mate, finance MEC Nomantu Nkomo-Ralehoko, was elected as his deputy.

On 4 October 2022, Makhura announced his resignation as Premier; some groups within the Gauteng ANC had called for him to resign so that Panyaza Lesufi could take his position and avoid creating "two centres of power" in the Gauteng ANC.

Panyaza Lesufi beat Solly Msimanga, the provincial leader of the opposition Democratic Alliance, with 38 votes to Msimanga's 22.

Panyaza Lesufi was again elected as the premier of Gauteng on 14 June 2024 following a negotiated Government of National Unity.

Panyaza Lesufi argued that many single-medium schools, especially Afrikaans-medium schools, did not have full classes but would not admit pupils who did not speak Afrikaans, while English-medium schools were overcrowded.

Panyaza Lesufi linked his policy to the principle of non-racialism and the constitutional right to education, claiming that Afrikaans-medium schools used language as a pretext for excluding non-white students and thereby retarded equity and post-apartheid transformation in the public education sector.

Panyaza Lesufi's policy was opposed by the Federation of Governing Bodies of South African Schools, Afriforum, and Freedom Front Plus, which demanded the right of schools to determine their own language policies and to preserve Afrikaans as a medium of instruction.

Also in 2018, the Citizen reported that the Gauteng Department of Education, under Panyaza Lesufi, had converted 119 Afrikaans- or dual-medium schools to English-medium schools.

Afriforum claimed that Panyaza Lesufi was discriminating against Afrikaans schools, which it said provided a particularly important service to coloured children.

Afriforum claimed that Panyaza Lesufi intended to use the legislation to eliminate all Afrikaans-speaking schools and make them multilingual.

Panyaza Lesufi pointed out that the bill proposed a national law, based on the policy of the national government, and did not emanate from his department.

In 2021, Panyaza Lesufi endorsed a traditional Chinese remedy, Lianhua Qingwen capsules, as a treatment for COVID-19; the remedy had been described by the American Food and Drug Administration as "fraudulent".

Panyaza Lesufi's spokesperson denied that his remarks about the pills, which circulated in a video on WhatsApp, had been intended as a public or commercial endorsement.

Panyaza Lesufi said that he had not been aware of the deep cleaning programme and would seek to hold accountable the department employees who had been responsible for signing the relevant contracts.