Zanele Mbeki OMSS (née Dlamini; born 18 November 1938) is a feminist South African social worker who founded the Women's Development Bank.
Zanele Dlamini was born in 1938 in Alexandra, South Africa, where her father was a Methodist priest and her mother a dressmaker.
[1] Zanele was a boarder at the Catholic Inkamana Academy in KwaZulu-Natal, before studying to be a social worker at the University of the Witwatersrand.
She resigned in 1980,[4] shortly before it was closed down after the exposure of her boss, Craig Williamson, as a South African spy.
[1][3] She lectured at the University of Zambia for two years and then worked for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Nairobi.