Kgalema Motlanthe

Petrus Kgalema Motlanthe, “Mkhuluwa” or the Elder One, as he is affectionately known, was born to a poor working class family, in a village near Bela Bela (formerly Warmbaths) in Limpopo Province on 19 July 1949. His mother was a washer woman who later worked in a clothing factory. His father worked at the Anglo-American head office. Motlanthe and his family moved to a home in the Alexandra Township in Johannesburg when he was about nine years old. Later, the family was forcibly moved to Soweto where he completed his schooling.

Kgalema grew up attending the Anglican Church and came under the influence of the priests, many of whom belonged to the ‘Community of the Resurrection’. He served as an altar boy for many years and at one point thought of becoming a priest.

After matriculating from Soweto’s Orlando High School he went to work for the City Council as a supervisor of the Johannesburg Council bottle-stores in the townships, a position he held for about seven years.  He was a talented soccer player and played for Spa Sporting Club in Pretoria and Rockville Hungry Lions in Soweto.

In the early 1970s, Kgalema was recruited into the ANC underground (Umkhonto we Sizwe). His unit was made up of, amongst others, Stan Nkosi.  They recruited people to be sent for military training outside South Africa. On 14 April 1976, three months before the Soweto uprisings Stan Nkosi, Joseph Mosoeu and Motlanthe were arrested and held for eleven months in solitary confinement at John Vorster Square (prison) before being charged in 1977 under the Terrorism Act.

They were sentenced to three counts under the Terrorism Act and effectively sentenced to ten years which he served in the medium security section of Robben Island Prison from 1977 to 1987. On his release from prison he found employment at the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and not long afterwards found himself chairing the 1987 mine workers “Great Strike” committee.

After the ANC was unbanned in 1990 he became chairman of the party's PWV region. He stepped down from that position in September 1991 to devote more time to his work for NUM.

Motlanthe was elected General Secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers and succeeded Cyril Ramaphosa who was elected General Secretary of the ANC in 1991.

In 1997 he was elected Secretary-General of the ANC, unopposed, when Cyril Ramaphosa resigned from the organisation and went into business. In 2002 he was re-elected General Secretary of the ANC and remained in that position until he was elected Deputy President of the ANC at its historic Polokwane Conference. He stood against Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma who got 1444 votes against Montlante’s 2 346 votes. In July 2008 Motlanthe was appointed to Parliament as a Minister without Portfolio in the Presidency. On the 25th September 2008 he was elected as President of South African after President Thabo Mbeki was asked to step down by the ANC.

In 2009, after the national election Motlanthe was appointed Deputy President in President Jacob Zuma’s cabinet.

In a profile for The Star, journalist Fiona Forde, noted that there are few within the ANC who have a bad word to speak of Motlanthe. "...To them he is the silent but strong force that exudes calm in a moment of panic - a man whose cool-headed outlook sees him through many a tough time. His is the voice of reason they regularly turn to in the sometimes disparate tripartite alliance. He is an intellectual of note, a comrade whose door is always open. He possesses great wit which he unleashes with a dry sense of humour...Mkhuluwa is also a man of principles, a paragon of political correctness as some like to say, an admirable attribute to most minds”.

Motlanthe is divorced and has two daughters and a son.

References:

• James Myburgh (2008). Who is Kgalema Motlanthe? From PoliticsWeb [online], available at: www.politicsweb.co.za
• Kgalema Motlanthe from Wikipedia [online], available at: en.wikipedia.org [accessed October 2009]
• Ford, F (2008) ‘For now 'Mkhuluwa' is our man’ from The Star, 23 September [online], available at: www.thestar.co.za [accessed November 2009]
• Joyce, P. (1999). A Concise Dictionary of South African Biography, Cape Town: Francolin, p. 187.