Andrek Panyaza Lesufi

Andrek "Panyaza" Lesufi (born 4 September 1968) is a South African politician who was appointed the seventh Premier of Gauteng in October 2022. He was previously Member of the Executive Council (MEC) for Education in the Gauteng provincial government between May 2014 and October 2022, with the exception of a two-day stint as MEC for Finance in May 2019. Simultaneously, he was acting MEC for Social Development between November 2019 and June 2020.

A former anti-apartheid and education activist, Lesufi began his political career in public administration and communications in the government of Ekurhuleni, Gauteng and in the national government, where he worked in the Department of Basic Education from 2009 to 2014. He was first elected to the Gauteng Provincial Legislature in 2014. He is a member of the African National Congress (ANC) and has served on its Gauteng Provincial Executive Committee since 2007; he was appointed the party's Provincial Chairperson in June 2022. He is also a member of the South African Communist Party and as well as a member of ANC's National Executive Committee.

Early life and activism Andrek Lesufi was born on 4 September 1968 in Edenvale, then part of South Africa's Transvaal Province and now part of Gauteng. His family relocated to Tembisa after they were forcibly removed from Edenvale under the apartheid-era Group Areas Act. He was given the nickname "Panyaza" because of his love of football. He attended Tlamatlama Lower Primary School and Tshepisa Higher Primary School and he matriculated from Boitumelong Senior Secondary School in Tembisa, where he became involved in student politics. He studied at the University of Natal and later obtained a Master's degree in business administration. and in 1995 at Durban City Prison. He served on a task team appointed by the national Minister of Social Development, Zola Skweyiya, to establish the South African Social Security Agency, launched in 2005, and worked for the Minister of Police, Nathi Mthethwa, in connection with the establishment of the Hawks in 2008. In July 2009, he was offered, but turned down, the position of Ekurhuleni municipal manager; he said he had declined due to his "other commitments in national government", and sources told the Sowetan that he had declined because of his loyalty to Motshekga. the National Press Club named him Media Liaison Officer of the Year 2012. In late March 2014, he was appointed for a month as acting director-general in the department, again working under Minister Motshekga. He was named Member of the Executive Council (MEC) for Education in the provincial government of Gauteng Premier David Makhura. A day after the new MECs were sworn in, however, Makhura reinstated Lesufi as MEC for Education and Youth Development, saying that he was responding to public calls – "from society, the education sector and the movement in general" – to keep Lesufi for a second term in the education portfolio, where he was popular. Basic Education Minister Motshekga had also expressed her view that it would be "a big mistake" to move Lesufi from the education portfolio.

From November 2019 to June 2020, Lesufi served simultaneously as acting MEC for Social Development, until Nomathemba Mokgethi was appointed to replace the late Thuliswa Nkabinde-Khawe.

Rise in the Gauteng ANC During the same period, Lesufi ascended through the ranks of the ANC in Gauteng. After serving three terms as Tembisa branch secretary, he spent eight years as deputy regional secretary of the ANC's branch in the Kyalami region and then became the inaugural deputy regional secretary of its Ekurhuleni branch.

Deputy Chairperson Eight years later, however, in June 2018, he was elected Deputy Provincial Chairperson of the ANC in Gauteng; the conference also elected Makhura as Provincial Chairperson. Lesufi won the position narrowly, beating another MEC, Lebogang Maile, by only 22 votes, earning 623 votes to Maile's 601. According to the Mail & Guardian, he secured the position by collaborating with Parks Tau, who was reportedly Makhura's favourite deputy; Tau withdrew from the deputy chair race and was instead elected Provincial Treasurer, apparently on the basis of an agreement with Lesufi's supporters.

Chairperson Makhura served only one term as ANC Provincial Chairperson and did not stand for re-election in 2022. Lesufi entered the contest to succeed him, again opposing Lebogang Maile. On 27 June 2022, at the provincial conference in Benoni, Lesufi was elected Provincial Chairperson of the Gauteng ANC, receiving 575 votes to Maile's 543. His running mate, finance MEC Nomantu Nkomo-Ralehoko, was elected as his deputy.

As of 2021, Lesufi was also a member of the South African Communist Party (SACP), the ANC's close partner in the Tripartite Alliance.

Premier of Gauteng On 4 October 2022, Makhura announced his resignation as Premier; some groups within the Gauteng ANC had called for him to resign so that Lesufi could take his position and avoid creating "two centres of power" in the Gauteng ANC. On 6 October, the ANC-controlled Gauteng provincial legislature elected Lesufi to succeed Makhura. He beat Solly Msimanga, the provincial leader of the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA), with 38 votes to Msimanga's 22.

Lesufi was again elected as the premier of Gauteng on 14 June 2024 following a negotiated Government of National Unity. Following his election and Premier, Lesufi announced his cabinet. Appointing a minority cabinet composed of various opposition parities excluding the main opposition party the Democratic Alliance (South Africa), after the two parties failed to reach on an agreement to co-govern Gauteng.

Controversies

Language of instruction While Lesufi was MEC for Education, opposition parties accused him of waging a "war on Afrikaans". This stemmed from Lesufi's policy of converting Afrikaans-medium public schools into English-medium or dual-medium schools, and became an issue as early as 2015, when it was leaked that the Gauteng Department of Education was conducting a study of "underutilised" schools in the province with an eye to ameliorating school overcrowding. The study proposed that public schools should be obliged to reconfigure their admissions policies to prioritise access to education over their own language policies and other internal admissions criteria.

Lesufi's policy was opposed by the Federation of Governing Bodies of South African Schools, and Freedom Front Plus, which demanded the right of schools to determine their own language policies and to preserve Afrikaans as a medium of instruction. In January 2018, Hoërskool Overvaal, an Afrikaans high school in Vereeniging, took the Gauteng Department of Education to court after the department placed 55 English-speaking children at the school for the 2018 school year. The school governing body argued that the school was already full and that it could not afford to hire English-speaking teachers for the benefit of a small group of students.

Also in 2018, the Citizen reported that the Gauteng Department of Education, under Lesufi, had converted 119 Afrikaans- or dual-medium schools to English-medium schools.'''

The debate was reignited in 2022 when the national government published the draft Basic Education Laws Amendment Bill, which it intended to introduce in the National Assembly. The bill would reduce the powers of school governing bodies in determining schools' language and admission policies, insofar as those policies would have to be approved by the provincial government, including on criteria related to equity and "effective use" of school resources. Opposition groups, including the DA, opposed the bill as an unjustifiable intrusion of the state into the remit of governing bodies.

COVID-19 In 2021, Lesufi endorsed a traditional Chinese remedy, Lianhua Qingwen capsules, as a treatment for COVID-19; the remedy had been described by the American Food and Drug Administration as "fraudulent". Lesufi's spokesperson denied that his remarks about the pills, which circulated in a video on WhatsApp, had been intended as a public or commercial endorsement. Lesufi said that he had not been aware of the deep cleaning programme and would seek to hold accountable the department employees who had been responsible for signing the relevant contracts.