Kgalema Motlanthe

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Kgalema Petrus Motlanthe (born 19 July 1949) is a South African politician who served as the third president of South Africa from 2008 to 2009, following the resignation of Thabo Mbeki. Thereafter, he was deputy president under Jacob Zuma from 2009 to 2014. Raised in Soweto in the former Transvaal after his family was forcibly removed from Alexandra, Motlanthe was recruited into uMkhonto weSizwe, the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC), after he finished high school. Between 1977 and 1987, he was imprisoned on Robben Island under the Terrorism Act for his anti-apartheid activism. Upon his release, he joined the influential National Union of Mineworkers, where he was general secretary between 1992 and early 1998. After the end of apartheid, he ascended from the trade union movement to the national leadership of the ruling ANC, serving as ANC secretary general from late 1997 to late 2007. He was elected ANC deputy president, on a slate aligned to Zuma, by the ANC's 2007 Polokwane...

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