Zweli Mkhize

He belongs to the Zulu Mkhize clan, formerly of the Nkandla region, but, by the time of the advent of apartheid in 1948, his family was bound to farm labour by a labour tenancy agreement.

His father later worked for the parks department of the Pietermaritzburg Corporation while his elder brothers worked as farm hands, but Mkhize continued his formal education.

He attended secondary school at Dlangezwa boarding school in Zululand, where he was a strong student.

He later said that the anti-apartheid protests of a local "eccentric", David Cecil Oxford Matiwane, sparked his interest in politics.

Zwelini Lawrence Mkhize (born 2 February 1956) is a South African medical doctor and politician who served as the Minister of Health from May 2019 until his resignation on 5 August 2021.

Zweli Lawrence Mkhize was born on 2 February 1956 in Willowfontein on the outskirts of Pietermaritzburg in what is now KwaZulu-Natal province.

He was the fifth of seven children.

In 1976, the year of the Soweto uprising, Mkhize began medical school at the University of Natal, where he was a member of the students' representative council.

By the mid-1980s, Mkhize was a member of Umkhonto weSizwe (MK), the underground armed wing of the anti-apartheid African National Congress (ANC), and was connected to other ANC figures in the KwaZulu-Natal midlands, including Harry Gwala.

He graduated with an MBChB in 1982, completed his internship at McCord Hospital in Durban in 1983, and began work at Edendale Hospital in Pietermaritzburg in 1984.

According to the Daily Maverick, his departure from South Africa was related to police attention to Operation Butterfly, the codename for an MK plan to bomb important infrastructure in KwaZulu-Natal; eleven other people involved in the plan had been arrested in late 1985, during a government state of emergency.

In exile in Swaziland and then in Zimbabwe, Mkhize continued to practice medicine; he often treated wounded MK combatants.

He went into exile in Swaziland in 1986.

He also continued his work with MK and by 1987 he was a commander in charge of underground cells which operated in KwaZulu-Natal.

He returned to South Africa in 1991 after the ANC had been unbanned by the South African government.

He initially worked at Themba Hospital in what was then the Eastern Transvaal, but opened a private medical practice in Pietermaritzburg in late 1991.

He, along with his MK colleague Jacob Zuma, became an ANC peace broker in the ongoing political violence in KwaZulu-Natal: ANC-aligned groups and Inkatha-aligned groups fought each other in the region throughout the negotiations to end apartheid.

From 1991 to 1994, he was also a member of the ANC National Heath Secretariat, which was tasked with formulating health policy for a post-apartheid South Africa.

He was a Member of the Executive Council in the provincial government between 1994 and 2004 and was elected provincial chairperson of the African National Congress (ANC) in 2008.

After South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994, Mkhize was appointed Member of the Executive Council (MEC) for Health in the provincial government of KwaZulu-Natal, one of two provinces where the ANC did not win a majority in 1994.

He held the post for a decade, becoming the longest-serving health MEC in the country. His tenure coincided with the peak of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa, which was particularly severe in KwaZulu-Natal.

Under President Thabo Mbeki, the government response to the epidemic was criticised as unscientific and influenced by HIV/AIDS denialism; in the summation of Bhekisisa Centre for Health Journalism, Mkhize was at times "both hero and villain" in this context.

While an MEC, Mkhize reportedly formed a close political alliance with Jacob Zuma, who became national Deputy President. He was elected to the ANC National Executive Committee, the party's top executive organ, at the ANC's 50th National Conference in December 1997, and he was re-elected to the ANC National Executive Committee in 2002 and in 2007.

He was considered "one of the main architects" of Zuma's rise to the ANC presidency over that period, having helped engineer an influx of pro-ANC members to the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal.

He also served as chairperson of the ANC National Executive Committee's subcommittee on education and health and was a member of the ANC task team on national health insurance.

However, his most prominent role in the ANC was at the provincial level in KwaZulu-Natal.

Mkhize deviated from national government policy in allowing the Centre for the Aids Programme of Research to conduct antiretroviral treatment trials in public clinics in KwaZulu-Natal. However, in 2001, when the Treatment Action Campaign sued the government for its failure to provide services to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV, Mkhize backed Mbeki in opposing the lawsuit.

In November 2004, Mkhize was appointed MEC for Finance and Economic Development, also in KwaZulu-Natal.

Under his leadership, the provincial department implemented austerity measures, which were considered successful.

He was also appointed Leader of Government Business in KwaZulu-Natal in 2004 and held both positions simultaneously until 2009.

In addition, from 2006, he chaired the political oversight committee for the 2010 Soccer World Cup.

Before that, he was the fifth Premier of KwaZulu-Natal from 2009 to 2013.

A former anti-apartheid activist in Umkhonto we Sizwe, Mkhize was formerly a provincial politician in his home province of KwaZulu-Natal, with particular influence in the KwaZulu-Natal midlands.

He rose to national prominence in 2012 when he was elected national Treasurer-General of the ANC at the party's 53rd National Conference.

This was attributed to Mkhize's apparent unwillingness to "break ranks" with Mbeki publicly. Later, in 2016, Mkhize wrote a lengthy open letter to Mbeki about his HIV/AIDS policy, describing himself as having been "caught in the middle" of the 2001 legal battle.

He said that, at the time, he had disagreed with Mbeki's opposition to antiretrovirals and had lobbied for the government to fast-track nevirapine trials.

He also campaigned unsuccessfully for the ANC presidency ahead of the 54th National Conference in 2017.

As Minister of Health under President Cyril Ramaphosa, Mkhize played a central role in South Africa's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, he resigned in 2021 amid allegations that he and his family had benefitted improperly from a state contract awarded by the Department of Health to a communications company called Digital Vibes.

He previously served as the Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs from 2018 to 2019.