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Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki[tA´bO mvooyel´u mbek´E] Pronunciation Key, 1942–, South African political leader. Mbeki was born into a politically active family; his father, Govan Mbeki, an official with the African National Congress (ANC), was imprisoned (1964) at Robben Island along with Nelson Mandela, released (1987), and became (1994) deputy vice president of the South African senate. Thabo Mbeki joined the ANC in his teens and left Africa illegally at the movement's behest in 1962, studying economics at the Univ. of Sussex (M.A., 1966). He represented the ANC in England (1966–70) and received (1970) military training in the USSR.
Returning to Africa in 1971, he worked with the ANC in exile in Zambia. During the 1970s he traveled throughout Africa for the ANC and became (1978) political secretary to its president, Oliver Tambo. In the 1980s, Mbeki was the ANC's director of information, becoming its director of international affairs in 1989. After South Africa's ban against the ANC was lifted (1990), Mbeki was a key ANC negotiator in the talks that led to the end of apartheid. He was named chairman of the ANC in 1993 and, after the 1994 elections, became South Africa's deputy president.
When South African president Mandela announced (1996) that he was stepping down, Mbeki was Mandela's choice as his successor as leader of the ANC, and he became the country's second postapartheid president after the ANC's landslide win in 1999. He adopted a conservative fiscal policy while denouncing racism in South Africa and calling for affirmative action and economic empowerment for black South Africans, His public questioning of HIV as the cause of AIDS and of the safety of anti-AIDS drugs, however, somewhat diminished his standing abroad and at home.
See biography by A. Hadland and J. Rantao (1999).
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