Thenjiwe MTINTSO
Member, ANC National Executive Committee Thenjiwe Mtintso was born at Shelter's Squatter camp next to Orlando East on 7 November 1950. She was the last born of three children. Her mother, Hanna Mtintso, was a single parent, her husband having died in 1952. She earned her living by mending the uniforms of nurses at Baragwanath Hospital.
After her older sister died in 1968, there was no one to pay for Mtintso's education, so she left school. She took a job in a factory and studied by correspondence and passed matric in 1970. By then her mother had retired and depended on her for support.
The year 1972 saw Mtintso at Fort Hare on a Race Relations scholarship, part of which was used to augment her mother's meagre pension of R80 a month.
At Fort Hare Mtintso joined the South African Students Organisation (SASO). She was expelled from university in 1973 after the "bush university strikes". She was elected on to the Fort Hare Action Committee that went around the country trying to mobilise the parents to support the students.
Mtintso then worked in King Williams Town in the Border Council of Churches on the Dependents' Conference. The premises, at 15 Leopold Street, became a key centre for political activity in the Border region. It also housed SASO, Zimele Trust Fund and the Black Community Projects (BCP) in which people like Steve Biko, Ramphele Mamphela and Mapetla Mohapi also worked.
In 1975 she started working for the Daily Dispatch as a reporter under Donald Woods. She joined the Media Workers Association of South Africa (MWASA) in 1975. In 1976, with the student uprisings, police suspected the involvement of the 15 Leopold Street group. Mohapi was arrested and was killed in prison. On the way back from his funeral, Mtintso was arrested and police demonstrated to her how Mohapi had died. She was released, five months later, and was banned and restricted to Orlando East where her mother lived.
Between 1976 and 1978 Mtintso was detained five times. After the death of Steve Biko in 1977 and the banning of black consciousness organisations, many BCM activists went into exile; some wanted to continue with the unity talks started by Steve Biko before his death. "We wanted ONE external organisation involved in armed struggle with a unified internal movement," she says.
They soon learned this was impossible at the time. Mtintso joined the ANC in 1979 in Lesotho, where she worked in the PC. In 1980 she went for training in Angola and the German Democratic Republic. Back in Lesotho she worked for the Regional Politico-Military Council (RPMC). She did more training in Cuba in 1981 and returned in 1982 to continue working in the RPMC. After being expelled from Lesotho in 1985, she went to Botswana in 1986 where she worked as the head of the RPMC until 1989.
Mtintso then went to Uganda as the ANC's first chief representative between 1989 and 1991.
In South Africa in 1991 she was elected to the SACP's central committee and political bureau. She was an SACP delegate to Codesa 1 and Codesa 2, and in Working Group 4 of Codesa for the SACP.
She was elected in 1994 to serve as an MP in South Africa's first democratic parliament, and was appointed as chairperson of the Commission on Gender Equality.
She was elected to the ANC National Executive Committee at the ANC's National Conferences in 1994, 1997 and 2002, serving as ANC Deputy Secretary General from 1997-2002.
She was appointed South Africa's ambassador to Cuba in 2003.