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Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma becomes first woman to chair African Union
But she has raised eyebrows with her unsmiling demeanor.
“I thought she could do better if she was a little more affable,” said Mashele.
Dlamini-Zuma was born January 27, 1949, in the eastern province of KwaZulu-Natal, Dlamini-Zuma took up politics in high school.
In the 1970s she went into exile, and studied in Britain at the universities of Bristol and Liverpool, while helping organize the anti-apartheid movement overseas.
She met Jacob Zuma while working as a paediatrician at a Swaziland hospital and they got in 1982. They divorced in 1998.
When the ban on the African National Congress was lifted in 1990, she returned home. After the first democratic elections she was tapped by Nelson Mandela to transform the country’s then segregated health system.
She is remembered for introducing legislation that overhauled the highly unequal system and gave the poor access to free basic care.
But she was also criticised for championing a controversial HIV drug that was later proved to be ineffective.
