David Mabuza

Through a rigorous recruitment drive, he increased the size and influence of the Mpumalanga branch of the ANC and, with Ace Magashule and Supra Mahumapelo, was part of the so-called Premier League that helped engineer the outcome of the ANC's 54th National Conference.

David Mabuza (born 25 August 1960) is a South African politician who served as deputy president of South Africa from February 2018 to February 2023.

David Dabede Mabuza was born on 25 August 1960 at Phola near Hazyview in what became Mpumalanga province.

His parents were farmers.

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.

He taught at KaNgwane Department of Education from 1986 to 1988 and was Principal of Lungisani Secondary School, also in Mpumalanga, from 1989 to 1993.

He also continued his political engagements: he was chairperson of the National Education Union of South Africa from 1986 to 1988, treasurer of Foundation for Education with Production from 1986 to 1990, and a co-ordinator of the National Education Crisis Committee from 1987 to 1989.

According to journalist Ferial Haffajee, Mathews Phosa recruited Mabuza into the United Democratic Front in 1986.

A native of rural Mpumalanga and a teacher by training, Mabuza's initial engagement in politics was through the Black Consciousness movement, while he was a student, and then through teachers' unions; he was chairperson of the South African Democratic Teachers Union, an affiliate of the influential Congress of South African Trade Unions, from 1988 to 1991.

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.

While studying at the University of South Africa for his Bachelor of Arts in psychology, which he earned in 1989, he began work as a schoolteacher.

After the end of apartheid in 1994, he joined the Mpumalanga provincial legislature as an ANC representative and took up a series of ministerial posts in the Mpumalanga Executive Council.

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.

He was Chairperson of the Nelspruit regional branch of the ANC from 1994 to 1998 and a member of the ANC Provincial Executive Committee in Mpumalanga from 1998 to 2006; he became provincial Deputy Chairperson of the ANC in Mpumalanga in 1999 and again in 2005, though in the interim he lost a 2002 election for the position of provincial Secretary.

The Mail & Guardian said that he used his time in the national Parliament to build national political networks in the ANC.

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.

In 2001, he left his provincial positions to serve a three-year stint in the national Parliament; he returned to the Mpumalanga legislature from 2004 to 2007.

During this period, he became known to the province's civil servants as "the Hurricane", "for his sporadic ireful outbursts when things go wrong".

Over the same period, Mabuza ascended through the provincial ranks of his political party, the African National Congress (ANC).

He also reportedly ingratiated himself with two successive provincial chairpersons – Mahlangu and his successor Thabang Makwetla – by campaigning for them and positioning himself as their deputy, while planning as early as 2005 to run for the provincial chair himself in 2008.

He was elected to the ANC National Executive Committee for the first time in 2007 and was ANC provincial chairperson in Mpumalanga from 2008 to 2017, throughout his premiership.

Mabuza's politics have been described as populist.

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.

In August 2008, he was elected provincial ANC Chairperson in Mpumalanga, beating Lassy Chiwayo with 388 votes to Chiwayo's 305.

He and an informal slate of allies, who were also elected to the party's provincial executive, ran an "Mpumalanga First" campaign that was described as populist and xenophobic insofar as it entailed castigating Mabuza's predecessors for giving government jobs to people from outside the province, especially from urban Gauteng.

The campaign was supported by local branches of the ANC Youth League, South African National Civics Organisation, and Umkhonto weSizwe Military Veterans' Association.

Mabuza's victory was also linked in some analyses to his support for Zuma: his predecessor, Makwetla, was one of several pro-Mbeki provincial chairs who were replaced with pro-Zuma figures during that period.

Others, however, thought the Zuma–Mbeki rivalry was irrelevant in Mpumalanga.

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.

He was the deputy president of the African National Congress (ANC) from December 2017 to December 2022 and was previously the premier of Mpumalanga from 2009 to 2018, throughout the presidency of his former political ally Jacob Zuma.

At the conference, held in December 2017, Mabuza was elected Deputy President of the ANC, serving under Cyril Ramaphosa.

Mabuza served as a Member of Parliament from 2018 until his resignation in 2023.

When Ramaphosa ascended to the national presidency after Zuma's resignation in February 2018, he appointed Mabuza to succeed him as national Deputy President.

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.

The Business Day said in 2018 that he had "run Mpumalanga with an iron fist".