Ayanda Dlodlo

Between 2007 and 2012, she was secretary general of the MK Military Veterans’ Association, and supported Jacob Zuma's successful bid to become ANC president at the Polokwane conference.[12] At the conference, which took place in December 2007, Dlodlo was herself elected to the ANC's National Executive Committee.[4] At the same time, pursuant to the 2009 national election, which also saw Zuma elected to the national presidency, Dlodlo became a Member of Parliament for the ANC; the following year, she was appointed parliamentary counsellor to President Zuma.[7] In May 2010, Dlodlo was one of three members of an ANC disciplinary committee that found Julius Malema guilty of contravening aspects of the ANC constitution.[13] Also in 2010, a memorandum from one-time consultant Gayton McKenzie to Gold Fields identified Dlodlo as a person of influence in Zuma's office who had "spent a great deal of time" helping Gold Fields to lobby Zuma in relation to mining contracts; excerpts from the memorandum were published by the Mail & Guardian in 2013.[14]

In November 2010, Zuma appointed Dlodlo his Deputy Minister of Public Service and Administration,[15] a position which she retained after Zuma's re-election in 2014[16] and which she held until March 2017.[4] In this capacity she represented South Africa at the Open Government Partnership,[17] and continued to do so from 2011 to 2019.[4] In a cabinet reshuffle in the early hours of 31 March 2017, Zuma appointed Dlodlo to his second cabinet, making her Minister of Communications;[18] in another reshuffle on 17 October 2017, Dlodlo was made Minister of Home Affairs, a portfolio which she retained for the rest of Zuma's tenure in office.[19] During Zuma's administration, Dlodlo was also re-elected twice to the ANC National Executive Committee – in 2012 and then in 2017 – and she chaired its subcommittee on legislation and governance between 2015 and 2017.[4]

During this period, she was implicated in two mild scandals. First, in 2015, while deputy minister, Dlodlo took a controversial holiday to the Oberoi Hotel in Dubai; it later transpired, in media reports based on the so-called Gupta Leaks, that the trip had been arranged by Sahara Computers, a company owned by the controversial Gupta family, and had been sponsored by Fana Hlongwane.[17][20] Whistleblower Vytjie Mentor also alleged, in a Facebook post, that Dlodlo had accepted a free luxury trip to Paris.[21] Following these reports, in 2017, Dlodlo acknowledged that she had been wrong not to disclose the Dubai trip as a gift.[21] Pursuant to a complaint by opposition MP Phumzile van Damme, a parliamentary committee found that Dlodlo had breached the parliamentary code of conduct and should be reprimanded.[20] Second, also in 2017, the Democratic Alliance, the ANC's main opposition, condemned Dlodlo for spending R1.5 million in public funds on two ministerial cars, both Audis.[22]

When Zuma resigned in February 2018, Dlodlo was appointed Minister of Public Service and Administration in the first cabinet of his successor, Cyril Ramaphosa, where she was tasked with restructuring the national public service.[23][17] However, after Ramaphosa was inaugurated for his first full term as president in May 2019, she became Minister of State Security in his second cabinet.[24] She was in this position during the July 2021 civil unrest in South Africa, which led to vigorous public and political debate about alleged intelligence failures by state security agencies. Dlodlo later said that she felt she had been unfairly scapegoated.[25] Weeks after the unrest, on 5 August 2021, Ramaphosa abolished the State Security portfolio and moved her back to the Public Service and Administration portfolio.[26] However, in early April 2022, Dlodlo resigned from the cabinet and the National Assembly to become an executive director on the board of the World Bank, with special responsibility for Angola, Nigeria, and South Africa.[5][27] She said she had handed in her resignation as early as October 2021, though Ramaphosa had not announced it until months later.[28][27]