David Mabuza

David Dabede Mabuza was born on 25 August 1960 at Phola near Hazyview in what became Mpumalanga province. His parents were farmers. He was the sixth of 12 children - eight girls and four boys. He matriculated at Khumbula High School, also in Mpumalanga. He earned a teaching diploma, specialising in mathematics education, from the Mgwenya College of Education in 1985; he was also secretary of the Black Consciousness-aligned Azania Student Organisation (AZASO) from 1984 to 1985. From 1988 to 1991, in the penultimate phase of apartheid, he chaired the South African Democratic Teachers Union, an affiliate of the influential Congress of South African Trade Unions. == Rise to the Deputy Presidency ==

Mpumalanga Executive Council: 1994 After South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994, Mathews Phosa, the inaugural Premier of Mpumalanga, appointed Mabuza his Member of the Executive Council (MEC) for Education in the provincial government of Mpumalanga. Mabuza served in that position until 1998, when Phosa fired him after a scandal in which it emerged that the province's 1998 matric results had been fraudulently inflated by twenty percentage points. Pursuant to the 1999 general election, Mabuza was elected to the Mpumalanga provincial legislature and was reappointed to the provincial executive under Premier Ndaweni Mahlangu, serving as MEC for Housing between 1999 and 2001.' "for his sporadic ireful outbursts when things go wrong". and again in 2005, The Mail & Guardian'' said that he used his time in the national Parliament to build national political networks in the ANC. ANC National Executive: 2007 Ahead of the ANC's so-called Polokwane conference in December 2007, Mabuza supported Jacob Zuma's successful campaign to replace incumbent Thabo Mbeki as President of the ANC. At the conference, Mabuza himself was elected for the first time to the ANC's National Executive Committee, the top executive organ of the party. . After the Polokwane conference, he returned to the provincial executive once more: he was MEC for Road and Transport from 2007 to 2008, Leader of Government Business in the provincial legislature in 2007, and MEC for Agriculture and Land Administration from 2008 to 2009. Others, however, thought the Zuma–Mbeki rivalry was irrelevant in Mpumalanga. Mpumalanga Premier: 2009 As provincial Chairperson, Mabuza became the ANC's presumptive candidate for Premier in the 2009 general election. On 6 May 2009, after the ANC won the election, the ANC caucus in the provincial legislature elected him Premier of Mpumalanga. For much of the next decade, Mabuza held both positions concurrently: he remained Premier until February 2018, and he chaired the ANC in the province until 2017, winning re-election in 2012 despite an attempt to unseat him. Among other things, he centralised decision-making power in his office through the so-called Rapid Implementation Unit. At that conference, held in December 2012, Zuma was re-elected but Mabuza himself did not secure direct re-election to the ANC National Executive Committee. In the mid-2010s, Mabuza launched a successful campaign to expand the ANC's membership in Mpumalanga. Between 2012 and 2017, Mpumalanga, one of South Africa's smaller provinces, jumped from being the ANC's fourth-largest region to being its second-largest (behind KwaZulu-Natal). The informal alliance between Mabuza, Mahumapelo, and Magashule – although they denied it existed – led journalists to begin calling them the "Premier League", because all three were the Premiers of their respective provinces. Alleged poisoning In September 2015, Mabuza collapsed and fell ill. Although it was initially reportedly that he was suffering from severe fatigue or a stroke, he told City Press that he had been poisoned. According to Mabuza, the use of the Guptas' jet had been offered to him by Duduzane Zuma, President Zuma's son, who was a business associate of the Guptas. He said that he did not have any other relationship with the family and that the favour would not create a conflict of interest. ANC Deputy Presidency: 2017 Ahead of the 54th National Conference of the ANC, which would elect Zuma's successor to the ANC presidency, Mabuza and the other members of the Premier League were viewed as the primary "kingmakers", both because of the large number of voting delegates allocated to their provinces and because of their apparent influence over the votes of the ANC Women's League and Youth League. However, his commitment to the Dlamini-Zuma campaign became less certain as the conference approached, Instead, he launched what he referred to as a campaign for "unity" in the ANC: indeed, he reportedly encouraged ANC members in Mpumalanga not to nominate presidential candidates but instead to vote for "unity"; In the week of the conference, he was described as the conference's "wild card"''' and the most votes. At the conference, Mabuza had apparently promised the Dlamini-Zuma camp that he would encourage the delegates from his province to vote for her. Despite his decisive role at the 54th National Conference, journalist Stephen Grootes argued that Mabuza's position in the ANC remained weak in the longer term, due to his lack of a national profile: The real source of Mabuza’s power at Nasrec [the conference venue] was not that he has overwhelming support from branches on the ground, or that he has a national following in the party – it was that the race between Ramaphosa and Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma was so close. He held the deciding delegates, which made him the kingmaker. That has given him, in some eyes, the perception of having immense power. But the deciding factor in this race was all that he had. If the two main factions had not been so close, his delegates would not have mattered. Translating what was a deciding, but small, factor into ultimate victory for the leadership is by no means guaranteed. ==Deputy Presidency==

On 26 February 2018, he was appointed Deputy President of South Africa by Ramaphosa, who had replaced Zuma following his resignation. Mabuza was sworn in the following day On 20 March, Mabuza gave his maiden speech in Parliament and for the first time responded to questions from other Members of Parliament. On 21 March, he addressed the national Human Rights Day commemoration in Sharpeville while Ramaphosa was abroad. When Ramaphosa was re-elected to a full term as President after the 2019 general election, Mabuza was re-appointed as Deputy President. Among other responsibilities, Mabuza was Leader of Government Business in Parliament, the head of the South African National AIDS Council, the head of the National Human Resource Development Council, and the patron of the Moral Regeneration Movement. He also chairs two cabinet subcommittees, one on governance and state capacity and one on justice and security. He did not reveal the purpose of the treatment but media speculated that it was related to his alleged poisoning in 2015; When questioned further in 2022, Mabuza said that there was "nothing sinister" about the trip, that its purpose had been medical rather than political, and that it had had no bearing on government policy on energy contracts or the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Motorcade accidents: 2022 Mabuza's motorcade was in two separate car accidents in 2022. In the first incident, on 27 July, a collision on the N1 in Midrand hospitalised two of his protection officers with minor injuries, but Mabuza was not in any of the vehicles. On 20 November, as the motorcade transported Mabuza from Mpumalanga to the O. R. Tambo International Airport, one of the vehicles overturned when a tyre burst; one protection officer was killed and two were hospitalised, but the car carrying Mabuza was not affected. Presidential bid: 2022 Ahead of the ANC's 55th National Conference in December 2022, at which Ramaphosa was re-elected as ANC President, Mabuza campaigned for his own election to the ANC presidency. However, the campaign did not receive adequate support for Mabuza to be included on the ballot paper for either the presidency or the deputy presidency positions. On the floor of the conference, he was nominated to stand for re-election as ANC Deputy President but declined the nomination. He was succeeded by Paul Mashatile. Resignation and succession: 2023 After being succeeded by Mashatile as deputy president of the ANC, it was reported on 27 January 2023 that Mabuza had offered to resign as deputy president of the country to make way for Mashatile to take up the position. Mabuza confirmed at his brother's funeral on 4 February that he had informed Ramaphosa of his decision to step down. Ramaphosa asked Mabuza to remain in the position until the transition processes had been concluded. On 1 March 2023, it was revealed that Mabuza had resigned as a Member of Parliament the previous day, ending his tenure as deputy president of South Africa. ==Other controversies==

Farmhouse burglary In December 2009, an amount of cash was stolen from Mabuza's farmhouse in Mpumalanga. The story attracted attention in part because it was never clearly established how much money was stolen. The Sunday Times heard from several police sources that R14 million was stolen, but that only R4 million had been reported missing "because it would have raised eyebrows that the premier kept such a large amount of money at a residential property". In November 2010, a police constable confirmed that a case had been opened at the Barberton police station regarding R4 million; it had been referred to the organised crime unit because it was a high-profile case. Lawsuit against Mathews Phosa In 2014, Mabuza unsuccessfully sued his former boss, Mathews Phosa, for defamation. The suit concerned a document entitled Classified: Top Secret! Reports of a Police Agent which Mabuza said Phosa had published and circulated in the ANC. Mabuza said that the document made various incorrect and defamatory claims, including that Mabuza was a spy for the apartheid police from 1985 to 1993. Phosa said that he had seen the document and had forwarded it to ANC Deputy Secretary General Jessie Duarte, but denied involvement in its publication. In August 2018, in a lengthy exposé, the New York Times reported that while Premier Mabuza had built a network of political patronage in Mpumalanga by artificially inflating, and carefully distributing, contracts to build schools in the province – a strategy facilitated by his Rapid Implementation Unit – and thereby strengthened his political base at the expense of the public service delivery. He said that the various allegations against him are part of a smear campaign by his opponents. Alleged political violence Mabuza was rumoured to have been involved in political violence in Mpumalanga. This includes persistent rumours, particularly among his local political opponents, that, while Premier, Mabuza was involved in conspiracies which led to political killings in the province. Mabuza was linked to the assassination of Sammy Mpatlanyane, a government official who was shot in 2010 after he refused to sign off on controversial tenders. Most prominently, however, he was frequently linked to the assassination of Jimmy Mohlala, who was shot dead on 4 January 2009. Mohlala was the Speaker of Mbombela Municipality and had launched a "crusade" against tender corruption related to the construction of the Mbombela Stadium; his murder was viewed as an attempt to cover up the corruption. Controversial activist James Nkambule, of the Congress of the People, claimed publicly that Mabuza was responsible; he also accused Mabuza of using state resources to intimidate him, and reported him to the police for intimidation over a threatening SMS he claimed Mabuza had sent him. Nkambule claimed to have met a Mozambican man named 'Josh' said he had been hired to murder Mohlala and others, and he was lobbying for the man's entrance into witness protection when he was poisoned in October 2010. Several years later, Mabuza's former butler, Jan Venter, alleged that Mabuza had once "let slip" to him that he was behind the assassinations of "Jimmy and James", which Venter understood as a reference to Mohlala and Nkambule; Venter was put in witness protection. In addition, Mzilikazi wa Afrika, a Sunday Times journalist who reported extensively on the killings and the claims of the alleged hitman, was arrested in August 2010 on a forgery charge laid by Mabuza, later dropped.''' In 2014, two men from Mbombela claimed that they had been members of a "dirty tricks" task team formed by Mabuza to suppress allegations that he was involved in political killings; they had been offered R3 million and jobs in the government and had been instructed to steal documents from Nkabule. Mabuza consistently denied involvement in the assassinations, and, as of 2022, the allegations had never been prosecuted or proven. In 2016, he told a journalist, "One day, people will get clarity when they lay hands on privileged information I have about the political murders... This individual bought people to kill people and allege that I killed them. They wanted me arrested... to be out of the way." He said the "private army" carried weapons, disrupted ANC meetings, and otherwise sought to intimidate local ANC members who did not support Mabuza's political agenda. He made the allegation in connection with a video that had surfaced of gunmen firing shots recklessly at a gathering, apparently in Mpumalanga; Phosa said that the men were connected to Mabuza. At the time, Phosa was instituting a court challenge against the Mpumalanga ANC, believing that there had been improper conduct in the process by which it had nominated candidates for election at the 54th National Conference. == Philanthropy ==

In 2014, Mabuza established the DD Mabuza Foundation. Its priorities are education and the social upliftment of vulnerable groups such as children, the elderly, and persons with disabilities. == Personal life and death ==

Mabuza was married to Nonhlanhla Patience Mnisi, a real estate agent at Pam Golding. According to the Independent Online, he was formerly married to Ruthi Funi Silinda; Silinda is referred to elsewhere as his customary ex-wife or former fiancée, and they had a daughter, Tamara, together. ==References==