Nkosazana Clarice Dlamini-Zuma (née Dlamini; born 27 January 1949), sometimes referred to by her initials NDZ, is a South African politician, medical doctor and former anti-apartheid activist.

Between 1976 and 1990, she lived in exile outside South Africa, primarily in the United Kingdom and Swaziland, where she practiced medicine and engaged in ANC activism.

Her father, Willibrod Gweva, was a teacher, whose brother Stephen Dlamini was an activist in the African National Congress (ANC);[3] her mother Rose was a homemaker.

[5] She returned to South Africa when the ANC was unbanned by the National Party government in 1990, signalling the beginning of the country's transition to non-racial democracy.

[9][10][11] In August 1995, the Department of Health awarded a R14.27m contract to Mbongeni Ngema, a "good friend" of Dlamini-Zuma's, to produce a sequel to Sarafina!, a popular South African musical.

However, investigations revealed that Dlamini-Zuma had misled Parliament about the source of the project's funding (which the Department had falsely said was sponsored by the European Union) and had ignored proper bidding procedures.

[12][14] The play was shelved in 1996, after the Public Protector published a report criticising the project's poor financial controls and procedural irregularities.

[4] At the beginning of her term, in 1999, she was involved in shuttle diplomacy in the Second Congo War, mediating among factions of the Rally for Congolese Democracy and between Uganda and Rwanda.

[27] The Mail & Guardian attributed the improvement in service delivery to Dlamini-Zuma's technocratic efficiency and implementation of internal control measures.

[3] In 2011, Dlamini-Zuma encountered public outcry when the Dalai Lama was unable to attend Desmond Tutu's eightieth birthday party because the Department, hesitant to offend China, failed to issue him a visa.

[29] In January 2012, while still heading the Ministry of Home Affairs, Dlamini-Zuma contested the position of Chairperson of the African Union (AU) Commission.

[45] Furthermore, "[i]n a room of stuffy old men talking about guns and tanks, she brought in concepts like gender, human rights and food security.

"[45] She was also credited with the politically courageous drive to suspend Egypt from the AU after Abdel Fattah el-Sisi's 2013 military coup,[4][33] although she did not condemn other authoritarian power grabs elsewhere in Africa.

[33][46] In early 2017, Dlamini-Zuma returned full-time to South Africa from Addis Ababa, and launched a campaign – ultimately unsuccessful – to win the presidency of the ANC (see below).

During her campaign, on 21 September 2017, she was sworn back in as a Member of the National Assembly, filling a casual vacancy arising from Pule Mabe's resignation.

[47] She denied rumours that she would replace Blade Nzimande as Minister of Higher Education in an imminent cabinet reshuffle, describing her return to Parliament as a standard redeployment arranged by the ANC.

[52][53] Re-elected following general elections in May 2019, Ramaphosa announced his new cabinet, which saw Dlamini-Zuma moved to the head of the Ministry of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA).

[55] However, observers agreed that, during her first three years in office, she failed to effect such a turnaround, with the financial mismanagement of municipalities remaining a major challenge on the Cooperative Governance front.

[59] Between March 2020 and April 2022, South Africa was officially under a national state of disaster, which allowed the executive to bypass Parliament in regulating the country's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

[62] COGTA's bans on tobacco and alcohol, and other so-called "hard lockdown" regulations, were fiercely unpopular with parts of the population and were subject to several challenges in the courts.

[58] However, some levity was introduced into the situation in May 2020, when South African DJ Max Hurrell released a house song which sampled remarks that Dlamini-Zuma had made during a press briefing about the tobacco ban.

[81][82][83] Indeed, some analysts suspected that Dlamini-Zuma's campaign was a "Trojan horse" for Zuma's interests,[84] aiming to secure his continued influence over the party.

[91] On 7 April 2017, amid national public demonstrations against Zuma's presidency, Dlamini-Zuma caused controversy by apparently disparaging the protests as "rubbish".

[98] In subsequent weeks, the Sunday Times threw into question Mazzotti's rebuttal – that he had only met Dlamini-Zuma once, briefly – by publishing Instagram photographs of the pair together on two separate occasions.