Andrek "Panyaza" Lesufi (born 4 September 1968) is a South African politician who was appointed the seventh Premier of Gauteng in October 2022.

[1] While an undergraduate, Lesufi was elected president of the student representative council at the University of Natal's Durban campus.

[1] He also managed outreach at the Tembisa Careers Centre and worked in non-governmental and community organisations, such as the Community Policing Forum and National Education Crisis Committee, which were aligned to the United Democratic Front (UDF) and later were part of the Mass Democratic Movement.

[4] He served on a task team appointed by the national Minister of Social Development, Zola Skweyiya, to establish the South African Social Security Agency, launched in 2005, and worked for the Minister of Police, Nathi Mthethwa, in connection with the establishment of the Hawks in 2008.

[1] After the 2009 general election, he became an advisor to Gauteng politician Angie Motshekga, who was newly appointed as the inaugural Minister of Basic Education.

[4] In July 2011, he was appointed head of communications and spokesperson in the Department of Basic Education;[6] the National Press Club named him Media Liaison Officer of the Year 2012.

[8] He was named Member of the Executive Council (MEC) for Education in the provincial government of Gauteng Premier David Makhura.

[14] From November 2019 to June 2020, Lesufi served simultaneously as acting MEC for Social Development, until Nomathemba Mokgethi was appointed to replace the late Thuliswa Nkabinde-Khawe.

[24] As of 2021, Lesufi was also a member of the South African Communist Party (SACP), the ANC's close partner in the Tripartite Alliance.

[32] Afriforum claimed that Lesufi was discriminating against Afrikaans schools, which it said provided a particularly important service to coloured children.

Opposition groups, including the DA, opposed the bill as an unjustifiable intrusion of the state into the remit of governing bodies.

[33][36] Afriforum claimed that Lesufi intended to use the legislation to eliminate all Afrikaans-speaking schools and make them multilingual.

[43] Lesufi's spokesperson denied that his remarks about the pills, which circulated in a video on WhatsApp, had been intended as a public or commercial endorsement.

[43] Also during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Gauteng Department of Education under Lesufi's stewardship allegedly spent more than R431-million on sanitising or "decontaminating" public schools between June and August 2020.

[44] Lesufi said that he had not been aware of the deep cleaning programme and would seek to hold accountable the department employees who had been responsible for signing the relevant contracts.