Lindiwe Mazibuko is the former Democratic Alliance Parliamentary Leader. She also served as the National Spokesperson of the Democratic Alliance. She is currently a resident fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics.
Mazibuko was born in Manzini, Swaziland and raised in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. She speaks isiZulu, French, English and Afrikaans. When she was 12 her father was assassinated in a suspected political hit during one of the worst eras of state repression under apartheid in South Africa. It was the first time she felt injustice and she says that she learnt that it is when good people do nothing that the worst evils are able to flourish. Mazibuko studied at the University of KwaZulu-Natal where she achieved a Bachelor of Music degree then to the University of Cape Town, where she obtained a BA (French, Classics, Media & Writing) in 2006 and a BA Honours (Political Communication) degree in 2007.
Mazibuko first became involved with the Democratic Alliance when she chose Helen Zille, the overall party leader of the DA as the subject for her honours dissertation. While completing research on Zille’s time as Mayor of Cape Town and DA Leader she discovered that the DA’s party policies were in line with her own ideologies and political vision. After graduating Mazibuko started work as part of the DA’s Parliamentary operation, after a year as a researcher, she was appointed the party’s national media liaison in 2008. That same year, Mazibuko decided to stand for public office and was elected to Parliament in 2009, becoming the DA’s National Spokesperson and Shadow Deputy Minister for Communications. A year later she became the Shadow Minister for Rural Development and Land Reform and in October 2011 was elected by the DA’s Parliamentary caucus as Parliamentary Leader and Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly. She became the DA’s youngest ever parliamentary leader and the first black woman in South African history to be elected to the post of Leader of the Opposition.
Mazibuko faced considerable sexism during her time as the DA’s Parliamentary Leader, in 2011 Julius Malema, then ANC youth leader, refused to debate with her, saying she was “a nobody, a tea girl” and in 2012 Koos van der Merwe, a long-serving IFP politician, stood up in the middle of one of Mazibuko’s speeches and interrupted, “on a point of order”, to ask what she had done to her hair, others suggested that she should be “arrested by the fashion police for her bad taste in fashion”. She took the comments, which she felt were designed to make her feel small, as a signal that she was a threat as well as a perfect example of the patriarchal nature of South African society. Her experience only strengthened her resolve to root out sexism in the house and make it so that seeing a woman in a leadership position in politics is no longer seen as some kind of aberration.
In 2014, after three years as the DA’s Parliamentary Leader, Mazibuko temporarily resigned her post and announced her intention to study at Harvard University in the United States for a year so that she could broaden her education and improve herself so that she could offer her party more politically. In May 2015 she graduated from Harvard University with a Masters degree in Public Administration. As of September 2015 she is a resident fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics. Mazibuko will teach students about the democracy-building process in South Africa and Africa, allowing them to ngage with members of the South African government, the opposition and civil society, as well as with the drafters of post-conflict constitutions in South Africa and beyond. She intends to ensure that her students understand some of the challenges, complexities and joys of building a modern democracy from the ground up. She wants to make it clear that young people should not wait to make a contribution to the society they live in until later in life and actively participate in politics.
Mazibuko is still committed to South Africa and the DA and will return when she feels the time is right. She believes that she has much to contribute to the project of building a better country for South Africa and will make herself available for whichever position will enable her to make that contribution. Lindiwe Mazibuko was named South Africa’s Most Influential Woman in 2012.