Lindiwe Mabuza (13 August 1938 – 6 December 2021) was a South African politician, diplomat, poet, academic, journalist, and cultural activist. She was an anti-apartheid activist who went on to serve her country as a member of the first democratically elected parliament of South Africa. She then proceeded to a career as a distinguished diplomat. She served on the Advisory Board of Elders of the Ifa Lethu Foundation, which repatriates South African artworks. She was a patron of Dramatic Need, a United Kingdom–based charity that promotes creative arts for children, and was an advisory Council Member of the Thabo Mbeki Foundation. She served as the chairperson of the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund UK.
Early life and career
Mabuza was born in Newcastle, KwaZulu-Natal, in South Africa. She completed her high school at St Louis Betrand High School in Newcastle. She then went on to attend Roma College in Lesotho and obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree. Owing to her struggle to find employment in apartheid South Africa, Mabuza moved to Swaziland and became a teacher of English and Zulu. In 1964 she moved to the United States and enrolled at Stanford University where she completed a master's degree in English. She went further to obtain her second master's degree in history majoring in American Studies from the University of Minnesota. In 1968 she became a lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Minnesota. In 1969 she joined Ohio University as Assistant Professor of Literature and History. Later in 1993 she obtained a diploma in diplomacy in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Her personal experience of racial segregation in South Africa, which led her to leave South Africa, and her exposure to the plight of African Americans in the Civil Rights Movement prompted Mabuza to join the struggle for the emancipation of her people in South Africa and Africa as a whole. In 1975 she joined the African National Congress (ANC) and moved to Lusaka in Zambia. In 1977 she became Editor of Voice of Women, a feminist journal for women in the ANC. She was also a radio journalist and broadcaster in Radio Freedom, which was the ANC's radio station, broadcasting from Zambia to multiple African countries. She was also the Chairperson of the ANC's Cultural Committee.
In 1979 the then ANC president Oliver Reginald Tambo assigned Mabuza to open ANC offices in Scandinavia and to become the ANC's Chief Representative to Scandinavian countries, residing in Stockholm, Sweden. Tambo reflected later in his speech to the ANC's women section in 1981 in Angola that "Comrade Lindiwe Mabuza cried and sobbed and ultimately collapsed on top of herself when she learnt she had been appointed ANC Chief Representative to the Scandinavian countries. But, looking at the record, could any man have done better?" During her time in Sweden, she mobilised support for the ANC and raised funds for ANC work across the world, especially for exiled South Africans in Zambia. She also led campaigns and lobbied towards the isolation of South Africa through trade bans and boycotts. She forged strong relationships with Scandinavians and was very close to the Prime minister of Sweden, Olof Palme, who was a major supporter of the ANC and resistance to the apartheid government. She had become such a formidable force against the apartheid government that on Monday, 8 September 1986, the ANC office was bombed with the hope of killing her and sabotaging the work she was doing. By the time Mabuza left Scandinavia, she had been so successful that the international offices of the ANC that she managed had grown to include Finland, Denmark, and Norway.
In 1986, Mabuza was transferred from Sweden to the United States where she served as the ANC's Chief Representative. With the aid of the Swedes, Mabuza managed to open and run an office based in Washington, DC. She arrived in America shortly after the American government had imposed sanctions on Apartheid South Africa. She continued to lobby congress and to work with many American activists like Jesse Jackson, Harry Belafonte, Jane Fonda and many others. She was instrumental in the many boycotts, rallies and other efforts to frustrate the apartheid government. Her efforts, with the help of other organizations and American colleges across America, led to Coca-Cola and many other such corporations withdrawing their investments from South Africa. Later, after the political prisoners from Robben Island were released, including Nelson Mandela, Mabuza was key in organising Mandela's first visit to America after his release.