Mamphela Ramphele and Naledi Pandor
Naledi Pandor
Naledi Pandor was born in 1953 in Durban. She received most of her education in exile and matriculated at Gaborone Secondary School in Botswana. She obtained a BA in History and English at the University of Botswana in 1977 before leaving for overseas where she subsequently graduated with a MA at the University of London. Back in South Africa she was awarded a MA in Linguistics at Stellenbosch University in 1997.
Before becoming the Minister of Education in 2004 Naledi Pandor was involved in educational issues in various ways. She taught English in both Botswana and London and then lectured at the University of Botswana before joining the University of Cape Town in 1989 as a senior lecturer.
Following South Africa's first democratic election in 1994 Pandor was elected to parliament, and in 1995 she became a Whip and then Deputy Chief Whip of the ANC. She also convened the Sub-Committee on Higher Education in the Education Portfolio Committee. In 1996 Pandor was appointed as member of the Cape Technikon Council. In August 1998 she became the Deputy Chairperson of the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) and in 1999 she was elected Chairperson.
SAHO biography
Dr Mamphela Ramphele: Enhancing the European Profile in Democracy Assistance, The Hague, July 4-6 (2004)
Mamphela Ramphele
Mamphela Ramphele was born in 1947 in the Northern Transvaal. In 1968 she was accepted into the University of Natal's Medical School which at the time was the only institution that allowed black students to enrol without prior permission from the government. She became increasingly involved in student politics and joined the South African Students Association (SASO), a breakaway from the multiracial National Union of South African Students (NUSAS). SASO was under the leadership of Steve Biko . The two became romantically involved and Mamphela later had Biko's child. She qualified as a doctor in 1972.
In 1974, Mamphela was charged under the Suppression of Communism Act for being in possession of banned literature. In 1975 she founded the Zanempilo Community Health Centre in Zinyoka, a village outside King William's Town. During this time, she was also the manager of the Eastern Cape branch of the Black Community Health Programme but her project was cut short when she was detained in 1976 under section 10 of the Terrorism Act. In 1977 the government banished her to rural Northern Transvaal, but there she continued her work with the rural poor.
In 1984, Mamphela's interest shifted to academic research when she entered the South African Development Research Unit (SALDRU) of the University of Cape Town as a research fellow. Soon she was appointed senior research officer in the University's Department of Social Anthropology, where she obtained a PhD. She was elected vice-chancellor of the university in 1996, the first black South African woman to hold such a position in a South African academic institution. She has served as a trustee of the Nelson Mandela Children's Trust and the President's Award Trust and is on the board of the Anglo-American Corporation and Transnet. She has received many honorary degrees and her PhD thesis, A Bed Called Home: Life in the Migrant Labour Hostels of Cape Town has been published as a book. She also has many other publications to her credit.
In 2000, after three years in her post at the University of Cape Town she resigned to take an appointment with the World Bank in Washington as managing director responsible for human development.
SAHO biography
