Thoko Didiza

Angela Thokozile Didiza (Msane; born 2 June 1965) is a South African politician who is currently serving as Minister of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development since May 2019.

Didiza was born on 2 June 1965 in Durban in the former Natal Province.

She was the youngest of three children born to Vusimuzi and Assiena Ntombenhle Msane, and her mother was from a family of small-scale farmers in present-day Mpumalanga.

Didiza attended the Ohlange School in Inanda, founded by John Dube of the African National Congress (ANC).

During her matric year in 1981, she met Phumzile Mlambo, who was later the first woman Deputy President of South Africa; Mlambo became a close friend and political mentor to Didiza.

Though Didiza had no tertiary education during her apartheid-era activism, she completed several postgraduate diplomas, including one in journalism.

Didiza worked as a legal secretary for Mafika Mbuli, a Natal lawyer, until 1985, when she became a secretary and then a programme officer for the Diakonia Ecumenical Church Agency.

Having entered politics through the church, she was involved in the leadership of the Natal Women's Organisation, as well as in the underground structures of the ANC, which at the time was banned inside South Africa.

In 1987, she was a member of a women's delegation to a meeting at the ANC's exile headquarters in Lusaka, Zambia, where, she later recalled, a senior member chastised her for passing notes to fellow activist Brigitte Mabandla.

In 1989, Didiza moved to Vosloorus on the East Rand to work as the national youth coordinator for the South African Council of the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA).

She was the inaugural secretary-general of the Women's National Coalition from 1992 to 1994.

While working for the YWCA until 1992, she also worked in different capacities for the South African Council of Churches (SACC), then a prominent anti-apartheid organisation based in Johannesburg.

She used the council's platform to canvass for the ANC and worked on its humanitarian and public relations programmes.

During the negotiations to end apartheid, she was a member of the National Co-ordinating Committee for the Repatriation of South African Exiles, chaired by Frank Chikane of the SACC, which made arrangements for the reception of political exiles returning to South Africa.

Didiza also continued her women's activism, and she was the inaugural secretary-general of the Women's National Coalition from 1992 to 1994.

She was elected to the first post-apartheid Parliament as a nominee of the ANC Youth League in 1994, and she joined Nelson Mandela's Government of National Unity as Deputy Minister of Agriculture from 1994 to 1999.

A political ally of Mandela's successor, President Thabo Mbeki, she subsequently became a rising star in Mbeki's cabinet, first as Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs and then as Minister of Public Works.

In addition, after the ANC was unbanned, she became active in the newly established ANC Youth League, which nominated her to stand as an ANC candidate in the first post-apartheid elections in April 1994.

After Didiza's election to the National Assembly in 1994, newly elected President Nelson Mandela appointed her to the first post-apartheid government as Deputy Minister of Agriculture.

Still in her 20s, she was the youngest minister or deputy minister in the government, and Mark Gevisser of the Mail & Guardian suspected that the ANC Youth League had lobbied for her appointment.

She held the office throughout Mandela's single term as president.

Upon taking office, Didiza said that she knew "only four things about agriculture", learned during her early childhood on her grandmother's small farm: "You plant, you grow, you eat, and what you don’t eat you try to sell."

In addition, her portfolio was widely viewed as politically precarious, but she was viewed as having "handled the difficult job with great success".

Until 1996, she deputised Kraai van Niekerk, who represented the National Party in the Government of National Unity, and, despite their differing political backgrounds, the pair reportedly worked well together.

Didiza was tasked with reforming the credit system for farmers, and she also launched the Broadening Access to Agriculture Thrust (BATAT) programme, which she described as "a strategy to force change in the department" and to "enable the department to understand its new role of supporting and encouraging new entrants to the sector".

The ministry under Didiza and van Niekerk was also noted for intermittently coming into conflict with Derek Hanekom, the Minister of Land Affairs, whose portfolio sometimes competed with theirs.

In 1996, after van Niekerk and the National Party exited the government, Hanekom became Didiza's boss at the head of the newly amalgamated Ministry of Agriculture and Land Affairs.

In parallel to her government career, Didiza continued to rise through the ANC, though with a low public profile.

Early in the legislative term, she was co-opted onto the ANC's National Executive Committee, the party's senior leadership structure.

Didiza was first elected to the ANC National Executive Committee in 1997.

She was a member of the committee from 1997 to 2007 and from 2012 to present.

She was directly elected onto the committee for the first time at the ANC's 50th National Conference in Mafikeng December 1997; she was one of only two ANC Youth League members to gain election.

A member of the African National Congress (ANC), she was the Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs from June 1999 to May 2006 and Minister of Public Works from May 2006 to September 2008.

Didiza entered politics through anti-apartheid activism, initially in Christian organisations and women's groups.

After the end of apartheid, she completed three degrees: a Bachelor of Arts in politics and sociology (2003) and Honours in politics (2007) from the University of South Africa, and a Master's in tertiary education management from the University of Melbourne.

Her absence from the committee between 2007 and 2012 followed the ANC's Polokwane conference, at which she launched an abortive bid to become ANC deputy secretary-general on a slate of candidates aligned to Mbeki.

She was among the several ministers who resigned in the aftermath of Mbeki's recall by the ANC in September 2008.

After a hiatus from frontline politics between 2008 and 2014, Didiza returned to Parliament in 2014 as a house chairperson in the National Assembly, a position she held throughout the fifth democratic Parliament.

During that period, she stood unsuccessfully as the ANC's candidate for election as Mayor of Tshwane in the 2016 municipal elections; her nomination led to several days of riots by ANC supporters in the city.

She returned to the cabinet in her current position after the 2019 general election, appointed by President Cyril Ramaphosa.