News
Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma inaugurated as Chairperson of the African Union Commission
The handing over ceremony was attended by the outgoing commission chair, Jean Ping, and Ethiopia?s new Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, who addressed the African Union for the first time since the death of the late leader Meles Zenawi.
A medical doctor by training and a veteran of the fight against apartheid, Dlamini-Zuma has also served as South Africa’s health and foreign minister.
Born January 27, 1949, in the eastern KwaZulu-Natal province, 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.
When the ban on the African National Congress was lifted in 1990, she returned home. After the first democratic elections she was tapped by Mandela to transform the country’s segregated health system.
She is remembered for introducing legislation that overhauled the discriminatory system and gave the poor access to free basic care.
