South Africa’s parliament Thursday elected a new President for the country.
He is Cyril Ramaphosa few hours after Jacob Zuma resigned in a late-night television address after a nine-year rule.
Before now, he was Deputy President of African National Congress (ANC), which has a large majority in parliament, a wealthy former business man and Zuma’s vice president since 2014.
Ramaphosa was born in Johannesburg, the industrial heartland of South Africa, on November 17, 1952. The second of three children, his father was a policeman.
He grew up in Soweto where he attended primary and high school. He later went to Mphaphuli High School in Sibasa, Limpopo, where he was elected head of the Student Christian Movement soon after his arrival, attesting to his Christian beliefs.
The new President studied law at the then University of the North (Turfloop), where he became active in the South African Students Organisation, which was aligned to black consciousness ideology espoused by Steve Biko. He became active in the University Student Christian Movement, which was steeped in the liberation black theology of the black consciousness movement.
After graduating with a degree in law, Ramaphosa continued his political activism through the Black People’s Convention, for which he was jailed for six months. He went on to serve articles and joined the Council of Trade Unions of South Africa which was to form the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) with Ramaphosa as its first secretary general.
He helped built the NUM into the largest trade union in the country, serving as its secretary general for just over 10 years.
His prominence and public stature grew even more when he was elected secretary general of the ANC in 1991. He went on to play a key role during South Africa’s transition, becoming one of the key architects of the country’s constitutional democracy.
