She is currently a member of the African National Congress and is Chairwoman of Purple Tree Holdings, a private company.
Dlamini-Sangweni was the first black and first female director of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, in which she served from 2002 to 2005.
At the age of two her family moved to Umzinto, and in 1980, she graduated from Sacred Heart College for Girls, Verulam.
On 16 September 2010 Dlamini-Sangweni delivered remarks at a briefing entitled "Traditional Leadership in the Modern World: Humanitarianism, Culture and the Diaspora" in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, D.C. conducted by Congressmember Diane Watson, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, whose Los Angeles district includes Little Ethiopia.
Empaneled with visiting royalty from Cameroon and Ethiopia (Prince Ermias Sahle Selassie), she described the cultural leadership exercised by reigning and deposed royalty among members of ethnic communities living in either ancestral lands or diaspora in the United Kingdom.