Lindiwe Mazibuko was born on 9 April 1980 in Swaziland but were raised in Durban, South Africa. She went to school at St Mary's DSG in Kloof, where she matriculated in 1997. After completing her matric, she went on to the University of KwaZulu-Natal to pursue a Bachelors Degree in Music, but decided to pursue other interests after a year as she did not find the course challenging.

She travelled to Europe and spent a few years there before returning to South Africa to complete her studies, this time at the University of Cape Town (UCT), where she obtained a BA Degree (French, Classics, Media & Writing) in 2006 and a BA Honours Degree (Political Communication) in 2007.

Lindiwe first got involved with politics when she chose Helen Zille, the leader of the Democratic Alliance (DA), as the subject for her honours dissertation. In order to complete her dissertation, she spent some time doing research both into Zille's tenure as Mayor of Cape Town and DA Leader, and into the party's policies and programmes of action, which she discovered were very much in sync with her own ideologies and political vision for South Africa.

Despite her studies, she had never been actively involved in politics, but had always had a passionate interest in every area of political life, particularly in South Africa, and soon after completing her post-graduate degree, she got a job as a parliamentary researcher for the Democratic Alliance (DA).

She saw this as an opportunity to put her words and thoughts into action by "rolling up my sleeves" as she puts it. She found her involvement in the political process exhilarating and after a year as a researcher, was appointed the party's national media officer.

Lindiwe decided to stand for public office in 2008 and was elected to Parliament in 2009, where she is the DA's National Spokesperson and the Shadow Deputy Minister of Communications.

She is the country's fourth youngest parliamentarian, after the ANC's Mduduzi Manana, Cope's Luzelle Adams, and her DA colleague Masizole Mnqasela, and has varyingly been labelled a "rising star in Parliament" and a possible future DA leader

Her constituency is North Durban in KwaZulu-Natal, and says she is utterly committed to politics and is grateful to have the privilege of being able to live her passion.

Aside from her interest in politics, she is an avid reader and likes to watch Black Adder re-runs to relax.

Sources:

• da 
• wikipedia/Lindiwe_Mazibuko
• whoswhosa/lindiwe-mazibuko

Page Created: 05 August 2011