Lindiwe Sisulu, Minister of Housing, Republic of South Africa

Ms. Lindiwe Sisulu is currently the Minister of Housing of the Republic of South Africa. Prior to this, she was Member of Parliament, member of National Executive Committee of the African Congress (ANC), member of the National Working Committee of the ANC and member of the Board of the Nelson Mandela Foundation amongst others organizations.

Ms. Sisulu was born in 1954, in Johannesburg. She was detained from 1975 to 1976 before joining Umkhonto weSizwe (MK), the military wing of the ANC and working underground. During her years in military training, she specialized in Intelligence. She obtained both her BA degree and Honours degree at the University of Swaziland and became editor of Times of Swaziland before teaching at the Manzini High School and then at the Manzini Teachers Training College. She then enrolled for an MA at the University of York, where she also completed her MPhil.

In 1990 after the unbanning of the ANC and other political organisations, Ms. Sisulu returned to South Africa and resumed work as personal assistant to Dr. Jacob Zuma and thereafter as an administrator in the ANC’s Department of Intelligence and Security. She has worked as chief administrator of the ANC at the Convention for a Democratic South Africa and as a consultant for UNESCO’s Children’s Rights Committee.

In 1992 she was awarded the Human Rights Centre fellowship in Geneva; in 2004, she received the Presidential Award for breaking new ground in Housing delivery strategy by the Institute for Housing of South Africa. She is also the recipient of the International Association for Housing Science Award in recognition for outstanding contributions and achievement towards improving and solving the world’s housing problems. She has published extensively on the subjects of women, the liberation struggle, working conditions and even agriculture.