John Solane Absolom Mavuso (1926 – 24 May 2011) was a South African politician who served as Minister for General Services in Nelson Mandela's Government of National Unity between March and June 1996.
[3] In 1962, he was appointed as a member of the ANC's National Secretariat under the leadership of Govan Mbeki; in the aftermath of the Rivonia Trial arrests, the body took over the functions of the NEC.
[4] In the mid-1960s Mavuso was suspected of being a police informant, on the grounds that several underground operatives had been arrested during rendezvous set up by Mavuso; however, most of his comrades came to the conclusion that the Security Branch had identified him as an ANC leader and kept him under surveillance in order to identify his contacts.
[6][7] Attending the party's annual conference in the Transvaal that year, he told a reporter that he admired that the NP, which by then was negotiating the end of apartheid, had the "courage... to admit its mistakes of the past and to decide to follow a new road of reconciliation".
[7] Mavuso was not initially elected to Parliament in South Africa's first post-apartheid elections in 1994,[8] but he joined during the legislative term: in February 1996, the NP nominated him for appointment as a minister in the Government of National Unity, President Nelson Mandela's transitional power-sharing cabinet.
Mavuso was named as Minister for General Services, a new ministry without portfolio that would perform special tasks assigned by the cabinet,[2] and he took office at the end of March 1996.
[10] Mavuso responded:If Jews and Germans can intermarry, what the hell is wrong with us coming to terms with the Afrikaners?
[2]In May 1996, weeks after Mavuso took office, de Klerk announced that the NP and its members would be withdrawing from all posts in the cabinet on 30 June.