Thabo Mbeki
Thabo Mbeki was President of South Africa from 1999 to 2008, and is remembered for competent macroeconomic management and for AIDS denialism that cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Born in the Transkei in 1942, the son of the ANC and Communist Party activist Govan Mbeki, who was imprisoned on Robben Island with Mandela, he left South Africa in 1962 and spent twenty-eight years in exile. He took an economics master's at Sussex, trained in the Soviet Union, and became the ANC's chief diplomat, conducting the secret contacts with white South African business and government figures through the 1980s that prepared the negotiated settlement. He was Mandela's deputy president from 1994 and effectively ran the administration. As president he pursued the GEAR programme of fiscal discipline, inflation targeting and privatisation, which produced sustained growth and a rising black middle class through black economic empowerment, while unemployment stayed above a quarter and inequality widened. He promoted the African Renaissance, founded NEPAD, and helped create the African Union, mediating in Burundi, the DRC and Côte d'Ivoire. His government questioned whether HIV causes AIDS, and his health minister promoted garlic, beetroot and lemon over antiretroviral drugs. A 2008 Harvard study estimated that more than 330,000 deaths resulted from the delay in providing treatment. He also pursued quiet diplomacy over Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe, which achieved little as that country collapsed. The ANC removed him as party leader in December 2007 in favour of Jacob Zuma, whom he had dismissed as deputy president, and recalled him from the presidency in September 2008 after a judge suggested political interference in Zuma's prosecution — a finding later overturned on appeal.
- Lived: 1942 CE – ?
- Nationality: South African
- Roles: president
