South African Parly Speaker to Receive Martin Luther King Legacy Award in US

Baleka Mbete, the speaker of Parliament, is to receive an award named after Martin Luther King – leader of the African-American civil rights movement – in the U.S. capital, Washington D.C., on Sunday.

The Martin Luther King Legacy Award for International Service is bestowed annually by a Washington-based health organisation – the Institute for the Advancement of Multicultural & Minority Medicine (IAMMM) – as part of the weekend’s commemorative celebrations in honour of the late Dr King’s birthday on 15 January.

Mbete will receive the award in person tomorrow. She is currently in the United States and has visited the Maryland General Assembly where she took the opportunity to applaud Maryland for being “the first southern state in the US to enact legislation that placed restraint on state investment in apartheid SA”.

The King tribute has been awarded annually since 1992 in recognition of “the distinguished leadership and contributions of exceptional individuals who have positively impacted the global community”, according to the website of the new Chair of the International Salute, Nigerian businessman Igho Sanomi.

The ANC Women’s League said in a statement that they are grateful to the “international community for recognising and affirming women leadership with an award of this magnitude” and that it signifies Mbete’s “great leadership on various leadership roles in South Africa and beyond”.

Mbete, who is also the National Chairperson of the ANC, was previously Deputy President of South Africa and held the position of secretary-general of the ANC Women’s League in the ’90s. She was also a member of the Presidential Panel on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

According to her profile on the ANC’s website Mbete, who was born on 24 September 1949, received a teacher’s certificate from Lovedale Teachers’ College and taught in Durban.

She then went into exile and taught in Mbabane, and went on to work for the ANC in several other African cities including Dar es Salaam, Nairobi, Gaborone, Harare, and Lusaka.

Previous winners of this award include Sanomi, conservative US Republican senator Bob Dole, former US Secretary of State General Colin Powell, former UN secretary general Kofi Annan as well as various ambassadors from the US, France, Africa, the UK and Germany.

Mbete is well known for her colourful outfits worn as Speaker in Parliament and is sometimes controversial, accused by opposition parties for protecting President Jacob Zuma from criticism and debates that might put him in a bad light.