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This resource is hosted by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, but was compiled and authored by Padraig O’Malley. It is the product of almost two decades of research and includes analyses, chronologies, historical documents, and interviews from the apartheid and post-apartheid eras.

Holomisa, Sango Patekile

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Chief Holomisa was born in 1959 in the Transkei, the eldest son of the Chief of the Hegebe tribe of the Thembu nation.

He is a lawyer by training and trade, the inkosi of the sub-clan of the abaThembu nation over which he presides in a system believed to impose a leader on a community purely on the basis of genealogy, while he himself sits in a democratically elected parliament as an ANC MP.

He is president of the Congress of South African Traditional Leaders of South Africa (Contralesa) which he sees as a personal crusade to ensure that traditional and customary values are respected and protected.

In the 1980s he was an activist for the United Democratic Front (UDF).

He is married to the daughter of Kaizer Matanzima, former chief minister of the Transkei.

Source: Mail & Guardian A-Z of South African Politics, 2004.

This resource is hosted by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, but was compiled and authored by Padraig O’Malley. Return to theThis resource is hosted by the site.