Bathabile Dlamini

Bathabile Dlamini (born 10 September 1962) is a South African politician who was the President of the African National Congress (ANC) Women's League from 2015 to 2022.

Bathabile Olive Dlamini was born on 10 September 1962 in Nquthu in what was then Natal province, now part of KwaZulu-Natal.

She grew up in Matshensikazi, near Nkandla, and in Imbali, a township outside Pietermaritzburg.

In 1983, she was a founding member of Imbali Youth Organisation, a civic organisation affiliated to the United Democratic Front.

She joined the South African National Students Congress, another Congress-aligned organisation, in 1985.

In 1989, she graduated from the University of Zululand with a Bachelor of Arts in social work.

From 1991 to 1993, she worked as a social worker at a non-governmental organisation for the physically disabled called the Pietermaritzburg Cripples Association.

During the same period, from 1991, Dlamini was part of the interim regional leadership of the African National Congress (ANC) Women's League (ANCWL) in the Natal Midlands.

The ANC had recently been unbanned by the apartheid government and the interim leadership was tasked with rebuilding the organisational structures of the ANCWL inside South Africa.

She was formally elected as the Regional Secretary of the ANCWL in the Natal Midlands in 1992 and held that position until December 1993, when she was elected Deputy Secretary General of the national ANCWL, serving under Secretary General Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula.

She was also a Member of Parliament between 1994 and 2004.

In South Africa's first post-apartheid election in 1994, Dlamini was elected as a Member of the National Assembly, the lower house of the new South African Parliament.

A social worker by training, Dlamini rose to national political prominence in the ANC Women's League, where she was Secretary General from 1998 to 2008.

Simultaneously, she was Secretary General of the ANCWL, a position which she held from 1998 to 2008.

After her conviction, Dlamini retained her position as ANCWL Secretary General, having been elected to a second five-year term in 2003.

Between then and 2004, she served on the Portfolio Committees of Correctional Services and Social Development.

In 2005, Dlamini was one of the politicians implicated by the Scorpions in South Africa's Travelgate scandal, which concerned the abuse of parliamentary travel vouchers.

The National Prosecuting Authority alleged that Dlamini had used parliamentary travel vouchers – designated for air travel expenses only – to cover the costs of hotel accommodation, car rentals, and other benefits.

In 2006, she was convicted of having defrauded Parliament in the Travelgate scandal.

The following year, in October 2006, she pled guilty to fraud in relation to an amount of R254,000 and was sentenced to a R120,000 fine or ten years' imprisonment with five years suspended.

She paid the fine.

She also became involved in the foundation of the Progressive Women's Movement of South Africa, launched in 2006.

She was first elected to the ANC National Executive Committee in 2007 and became an outspoken supporter of former President Jacob Zuma, who appointed her to his cabinet.

Within the ANC, Dlamini – unlike the rest of the ANCWL leadership, then headed by Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula – was a strong supporter of ANC Deputy President Jacob Zuma, who ultimately succeeded in ousting Thabo Mbeki from the ANC presidency at the party's 52nd National Conference in December 2007.

At the same conference, Dlamini was elected to a five-year term on the National Executive Committee of the mainstream ANC, and she simultaneously served on the party's National Working Committee.

At the conclusion of her term as ANCWL Secretary General, Dlamini stood to succeed Mapisa-Nqakula as ANCWL President, but in July 2008 she was defeated in a vote by Angie Motshekga.

However, Dlamini was elected to an ordinary seat on the ANCWL National Executive Committee. In 2008, she also worked as a full-time employee of the ANC as a sectoral work co-ordinator in the office of newly elected ANC President Zuma.

Dlamini was re-elected to a seat in the National Assembly in the 2009 general election, which also saw Zuma elected as President of South Africa.

On 11 May 2009, Zuma appointed her Deputy Minister of Social Development under Minister Edna Molewa.

She served as Deputy Minister until 31 October 2010, when Zuma announced a cabinet reshuffle in which Dlamini replaced Molewa as Minister of Social Development.

Dlamini remained in the social development portfolio for the rest of Zuma's presidency, securing appointment to his second cabinet after the 2014 general election.

As Minister, she chaired the inter-ministerial committees on gender-based violence, combating substance abuse, and early childhood development. During her tenure, the gender-based violence committee launched the Gender-Based Violence Command Centre, a 24-hour call centre which counselled victims of gender-based violence.

In June 2016, the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) criticised Dlamini for arguing that social grant recipients should be able to survive on a monthly payment of R753, pointing out that she had herself spent R11,000 on a short stay in a luxury hotel in Umhlanga Rocks.

As Social Development Minister, Dlamini was a central figure in the 2017 social grants crisis which nearly disabled the South African Social Security Agency and social welfare system.

The Constitutional Court and an official inquiry into her conduct both concluded that her personal negligence had contributed to the crisis.

In April 2022, she was additionally convicted of perjury for having lied under oath during the inquiry.

In the same month, she was removed as President of the ANC Women's League when the ANC disbanded the league's leadership corps on the grounds that it had exceeded its five-year term.

Her perjury conviction also disqualified her from standing for election to a fourth five-year term on the ANC National Executive Committee.

She was previously the Minister in the Presidency for Women from 2018 to 2019 and the Minister of Social Development from 2010 to 2018.

Although she served briefly as Minister for Women under Zuma's successor, Cyril Ramaphosa, she was removed from the cabinet after the May 2019 general election and resigned from the National Assembly the following month.