The Thabo Mbeki Award for Leadership: Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo

[Toyin Falola]

The Thabo Mbeki Award for Leadership is awarded to an African who has distinguished him/herself in the public or private sector. The recipient of the award must be an individual of a high caliber with unblemished record of public service or in the private sector. The awardee must be someone who is committed to the project of African Renaissance and African Unity. This year’s recipient is Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo

Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo, a retired journalist and diplomat, is a former CEO of the Thabo Mbeki Foundation. He started working as a journalist in the mid-1960s as a reporter for the Golden City Post and then the World newspapers and Drum Magazine. He later studied journalism at the Ernie Pyle School of Journalism at Indiana University in Bloomington in the US. After 1976 he fled South Africa and sought political exile in New York where he joined the Africa Fund and the American Committee on Africa where he coordinated the divestment campaign; an anti-Apartheid campaign in the US. Upon his return from exile in 1997, he joined the Department of Foreign Affairs as Director of the US desk. In April 1999 then president Nelson Mandela appointed him as South Africa’s Ambassador to the United Nations. At the UN, Ambassador Kumalo chaired the Non-Aligned Movement Committee, coordinated the Bureau and the Africa Group and was later elected Africa Vice-President of the UN General Assembly. In 2007, President Thabo Mbeki appointed him as South Africa’s Representative to the UN Security Council. In 2008, together with the Representative of Panama, he was elected by the UN General Assembly to coordinate the creation of the UN Human Rights Council. Later Ambassador Kumalo was also elected leader of the Group of 77 countries and China. In 2013 he retired from the Department of Foreign Affairs and became CEO of the Thabo Mbeki Foundation.