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27 August - 2 September 2013
Issue 529
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| Outgoing South African High Commissioner to the UK Dr Zola Skweyiya’s term ends on 31 August and he will be retiring from public office. The South African government is yet to announce the name of Skweyiya’s successor but it is widely believed that the role will be given to a former mayor of Durban by STAFF REPORTER
SOUTH African High Commissioner to the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, Dr Zola Sidney Themba Skweyiya, will be returning home next week as his four-year term in London has reached its end. Skweyiya was appointed to the position by President Jacob Zuma in September 2009 and will be retiring to South Africa after many years of public service. Dr Skweyiya’s action-filled term has included the State visit of President Jacob Zuma in 2010, the FIFA World Cup later that year, the 2012 London Olympics and several encounters with Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace. Skweyiya has also been instrumental in putting South African arts, culture, sport and heritage at the forefront of South Africa’s outreach in the United Kingdom. He has attended two South African seasons in Edinburgh and paved the way for the the SA-UK Season and the 20th anniversary of South Africa’s democracy in 2014. Born in Simons Town on 14 April 1942, Skweyiya lived his childhood amid the poverty of depressed communities. After his family moved to Port Elizabeth he attended primary school in New Brighton and then in Retreat, Cape Town. Here the Catholic Church organised activities such as tours of the Peninsula to keep poor children out of mischief. These tours provided their only
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Dr Zola Skweyiya, SA High Commissioner to the UK
view of a world beyond poverty, but Skweyiya also expanded his worldview through reading. He was offered a scholarship at Lovedale High School where he participated in school boycotts against the introduction of Bantu Education in 1953. The experience convinced him of the need to foster unity among Africans and he joined the ANC in 1956. The multiracial makeup of the ANC leadership and their united stand after their arrest for treason deeply impressed him. He matriculated from Lovedale in
1960. Around this time he met and worked with Govan Mbeki and Mbeki’s commitment to action and sound knowledge of rural politics strengthened his feeling that the ANC was on the right track. When Nelson Mandela went abroad to seek military training facilities for the ANC, Skweyiya was one of those who mobilised support among the people for Umkhonto we Sizwe. By 1963 he was in danger of being arrested. Travelling to Tanzania, he worked for the ANC until a move to the Lusaka office in 1965.
The liberation of African countries from colonialism in the ’60s kindled and sustained his belief that one day South Africa would be free. His intellectual abilities were soon recognised and in 1968 the movement arranged for him to study law as a guest of the German Democratic Republic. In 1978 he received an LLD at the University of Leipzig. He then worked for the ANC in various offices and capacities, travelling extensively throughout the world and publishing articles in many journals. Skweyiya returned from exile in June 1990, and was shocked at the deprivation and homelessness of Africans. He helped to set up the Centre for Development Studies and the South African Legal Defence Fund, both at the University of the Western Cape and was also elected as president of Continued on page 2
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