Blade Nzimande

Blade Nzimande

Bonginkosi Emmanuel "Blade" Nzimande (born April 14, 1958 in Edendale ) is a South African politician. He was Minister for Higher Education and Training from May 2009 and Minister of Transport since February 2018. Following the resignation of Malusi Gigaba , President Cyril Ramaphosa temporarily appointed Nzimande as Minister of the Interior. He has been Minister of Higher Education, Science and Technology since 2019 .

Life

Nzimande began school at the Roman Catholic School in Henryville, then studied at the Plessiers Lower Primary School and at the Mthethomusha School in Edendale. Most recently he attended Georgetown High School in the same place, where he took his matric in 1975 . After finishing school, Nzimande began studying public administration and psychology at the University of Zululand in 1975 with the aim of obtaining a bachelor's degree . Here he got into student protests in 1976 against the award of an honorary doctorate to Mangosuthu Butelezi . The escalating situation with police lines shooting at protesting students created tumultuous scenes in which the university administration building burned down and the university facility was closed for a period of time. In 1977 he was able to return to the university and graduated in 1979. He then returned to Edendale and became involved in the Azanian Student's Organization (AZASO), which later moved away from the Black Consciousness Movement and turned to the Congress Aliance . His adequate positions were then influenced by Radio Freedom and Radio Moscow .

He completed further studies at the University of Natal in Pietermaritzburg in 1980 with a Psychology Honors and in 1981 with a Masters in Industrial Psychology . He later earned a Ph.D. specializing in human resource management . In January 1982 Nzimande went to Durban and took part in the Dambuza Youth Organization . During this time he found Hulett Sugar Ltd. in the human resources department of Tongaat. a job. He made his acquaintance with Jay Naidoo and other unionists. In 1984 he quit this job because he was offered a lectureship at the University of Zululand in the Department of Industrial Psychology . The offer led him to work on the Umlazi campus , where he was only lecturer at the University of Zululand in 1985 . Here he secretly taught interested students on topics of Marxism . He kept his current position until June 1987. Since 1987 he has taught industrial psychology in the Department of Psychology at the University of Natal. At the end of the 1980s, his political commitment led to a participation in the local sphere of activity of the National Education Co-ordinating Committee (NECC). In September 1989, Nzimande became a member of the National Reception Committee , which fought for the release of political prisoners in South Africa. Nevertheless, he managed to help set up secret structures for the ANC and the SACP in the Umlazi region, where he himself was the secretary of the Bhekithemba regional group. Harry Gwala moved him to help set up the ANC in its Natal Midlands region and to take on the role of civic education officer. In August, Nzimande was appointed director of the Education Policy Unit (EPU) based in Durban, a joint project between the University of Natal and the NECC. In 1992, ANC delegates elected him vice-chairman of the Natal Midlands regional group and in April 1995 the SACP delegates of the 9th Congress elected him vice-party leader. When Nzimande ran on the ANC list for the South African National Assembly in 1994 , he won a seat in parliament.

Nzimande is a member of the South African Communist Party (SACP) and has been its general secretary since 1998.

Government activity

After Jacob Zuma's election as the new President of South Africa , he was appointed Minister of Higher Education and Training in the Zuma I cabinet on May 10, 2009 . During that time, he promoted education at Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University , which opened in 2015. He retained his post in the Zuma II cabinet and became Minister of Transport in the Ramaphosa I cabinet . After briefly taking over the interior ministry of the resigned Malusi Gigaba , he became Minister of Higher Education, Science and Technology in the Ramaphosa II cabinet in May 2019 (for example: "Minister for Higher Education, Science and Technology"). The department was created through the merger of two previous ministries.

Publications

• Schooling in the context of violence in South Africa: the challenges of change. Harare 1994.

Web links

• Entry in Who's Who in South Africa (English; archive version from 2012)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Omstrede minister Gigaba thanks , Maroela Media (Afrikaans), accessed on November 20, 2018
2. ↑ ^{a b} Shelag Gastrow: Who's Who in South African Politics. Number 5 . Johannesburg 1995, pp. 238-241
3. ↑ Government of South Africa: Bonginkosi Emmanuel "Blade" Nzimande BEB, Dr . on www.gov.za (English)