Faith Muthambi

Azwihangwisi Faith Muthambi (born 19 February 1974) is a South African politician who was the Minister of Public Service and Administration and Minister of Communications under President Jacob Zuma.

Muthambi was born on 19 February 1974.

She was a student activist as a teenager, first in the South African National Students Congress between 1989 and 1990 and then, after the African National Congress (ANC) was unbanned in 1990, through the ANC Youth League.

She was the secretary of the league's branch in Tshimbupfe in the former Northern Transvaal (present-day Limpopo) from 1991 to 1992, and she joined the branch executive committee of the mainstream ANC in Tshimbupfe in 1992.

From 1993 to 1996, she was a student at the University of Venda, during which time she continued to rise through the ANC's ranks, gaining election as deputy secretary of the ANC branch in the Vuwani zone.

She graduated with a BProc in 1996.

Muthambi was admitted as an attorney of the High Court of South Africa in 2000.

She worked as manager for labour relations in the office of the Premier of Limpopo and as a legal adviser and then manager in various municipalities in Limpopo.

She was a member of the regional executive committee of the ANC Youth League in Vhembe from 2003 until 2005, when she was elected to a three-year term as provincial treasurer of the league.

Muthambi is an admitted attorney of the High Court of South Africa and formerly held various positions in the civil service in Limpopo, most proximately as the municipal manager of Makhado Local Municipality from 2004 to 2009.

Most proximately, she worked at Makhado Local Municipality, where she was the director of the municipal secretariat until July 2004, when she was appointed as acting municipal manager after the incumbent was suspended on corruption charges.

She was later appointed to the position permanently, becoming the first woman to hold the job.

Less than a year into her term, on 26 May 2005, she was arrested by the Serious Economic Crime Unit on charges of fraud in relation to the sale of a luxury vehicle.

She denied the charges, and they were withdrawn on 1 July.

She was elected to the regional executive committee of the mainstream ANC in Vhembe in 2006, and to the provincial executive committee of the ANC Women's League in 2008.

She later joined the Provincial Executive Committee of the mainstream ANC in Limpopo, and she also served a stint as chairperson of the Black Management Forum's branch in Thohoyandou.

After some political wrangling, her contract was extended by five years in November 2007.

Her tenure as municipal manager was controversial.

In April 2008, members of the South African Municipal Workers' Union (SAMWU) held a protest demanding Muthambi's immediate suspension; the union accused her of nepotism and corruption, among other things in a municipal construction tender awarded to the company of Stanley Radzilani, who allegedly had a close friendship with Muthambi and who was allegedly overpaid for shoddy work.

Following further protests and an internal investigation, during which Muthambi took special leave, she was suspended at the end of June 2008.

A municipal spokesperson said that Radzilani appeared to be "a boyfriend of some sort", which Muthambi denied, and also said that she was under investigation for nepotism for having allegedly appointed her cousin as a municipal librarian without any job interview.

Muthambi said that her suspension had been unprocedural and was "personal", arising from her deteriorating relationship with Makhado mayor Glory Mashaba.

Muthambi returned to work as municipal manager in September 2008 after the Labour Court ruled in her favour, though SAMWU immediately held an illegal strike to protest her return.

Later that year, she sued SAMWU and two local newspapers, the Limpopo Mirror and Zoutbansberger, alleging that they had defamed her in connection with the saga; her suit was dismissed.

Throughout this period, Muthambi remained active in the ANC.

She represented the African National Congress in the National Assembly from May 2009 to November 2022, and she has been a member of the party's National Executive Committee since December 2017.

She joined the National Assembly in the 2009 general election and spent five years as a backbencher before she was appointed as Minister of Communications in Zuma's second-term cabinet.

Muthambi left Makhado after the 2009 general election, in which she was elected to an ANC seat in the National Assembly, the lower house of the South African Parliament.

During her first term in the assembly, she represented the Limpopo constituency and served as a member of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts and Portfolio Committee on Communications; she was the ANC's whip in the latter.

She was also a member of the Pan African Parliament from 2009 to 2014.

At the very end of the parliamentary term, she was one of seven ANC representatives nominated to serve on the ad hoc committee tasked with devising Parliament's response to the Nkandla scandal.

She held that office between May 2014 and March 2017, and later she was Minister of Public Service and Administration from March 2017 to February 2018.

Her tenure as a minister was controversial due to her apparent links to the Gupta family, and the Zondo Commission labelled her "a Gupta minister" and referred her for prosecution on corruption charges.

In the next general election in 2014, Muthambi was re-elected to her parliamentary seat, now ranked 104th on the ANC's national party list.

After the election, President Jacob Zuma appointed her to his second-term cabinet, where she succeeded Yunus Carrim as Minister of Communications, a newly reconfigured portfolio.

Marian Shinn, the Shadow Minister of Communications for the opposition Democratic Alliance, welcomed Muthambi's appointment, saying that, in the Portfolio Committee on Communications, she had shown herself to be "a person of integrity" with extensive knowledge of ICT.

Within several months of her appointment, Zuma transferred various communication functions to the Ministry in the Presidency under Jeff Radebe, a move interpreted by the Mail & Guardian as meaning that Muthambi had been "tacitly demoted".

Also within her first months in office, Muthambi made the controversial decision to appoint Hlaudi Motsoeneng permanently as the chief operating officer at the public broadcaster, the SABC, despite a recent finding by the Public Protector that he had misconducted himself.

After she was sacked from the cabinet by President Cyril Ramaphosa in February 2018, Muthambi served stints as chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs and Portfolio Committee on Environment, Forestry and Fisheries.

She resigned from Parliament on 28 November 2022.