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Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki (lahir 18 Juni 1942) adalah Presiden Republik Afrika Selatan.

Latar Belakang
Ia lahir di Idutywa, Afrika Selatan) adalah Presiden Republik Afrika Selatan. Lahir dan dibesarkan di wilayah yang kini menjadi bagian Eastern Cape provinsi Afrika Selatan, Mbeki adalah anak Govan Mbeki (1910 - 2001). Ayahnya pernah pemimpin Kongres Nasional Afrika (ANC: African National Congress) dan Partai Komunis Afrika Selatan (South African Communist Party). Ayahnya adalah pekerja keras yang sangat loyal pada partai dan menjadi salah satu tokoh pejuang yang ikut menyusun piagam Kemerdekaan Afrika Selatan. Ibunya (Epainette Mbeki) adalah orang pertama Afrika Selatan yang dipasung hak-hak politiknya.
His parents were both teachers and activists in a rural area of ANC strength, and Mbeki describes himself as "born into the struggle"; a portrait of Karl Marx sat on the family mantlepiece, and a portrait of Mohandas Gandhi was on the wall. Govan Mbeki had come to the rural Eastern Cape as a political activist after earning two university degrees; he urged his family to make the ANC their family, and of his children, Thabo Mbeki is the one who most clearly followed that instruction, joining the party at age 14 and devoting his life to it thereafter. [1][2] After leaving the Eastern Cape, he lived in Johannesburg, working with Walter Sisulu.
Dengan dalih melanggar Undang-undang Penanggulangan Komunisme Afrika Selatan, rezim apartheid menghukum dengan cara seperti itu. Maka keluarga menyelamatkan Mbeki, dua saudara lelaki dan perempuan. Mereka dititipkan pada sanak saudara ataupun teman seperjuangan di luar rumah. Pendidikan dasar Mbeki dilakukan di sekolah Idutywa dan Butterworth, sedang pendidikan lanjutan di Lovedale (Alice). Tahun 1956, ia bergabung dengan Liga Pemuda ANC ketika masih studi di Lovedale Institute.
Tahun 1959, ia lulus dari St John's High School (Umtata). Tahun itu yang usianya baru 17 tahun, ia sudah terlibat dalam sekelompok pelajar yang melakukan pemogokan di sekolah menengah. Bersama teman-temannya, ia memprotes sekolah yang menganut sistem apartheid.
Ketika ANC dinyatakan terlarang, ia bersama sejumlah teman belajarnya mengorganisasi gerakan bawah tanah di kalangan mahasiswa dan pelajar. Selain tampil sebagai Umkhonto we Sizwe (ujung tombak bangsa) pasukan bawah tanah bentukan Mandela. Tujuan pasukan itu adalah menjadi tentara garis depan dalam perjuangan kemerdekaan. Mandela kemudian menghentikan langkah pemuda-pemuda nekad itu untuk menghindari timbulnya martir-martir yang sia-sia. Mandela mempersiapkan mereka menjadi pemimpin-pemimpin perjuangan di masa selanjutnya.
Periode 1960-1961, Mbeki melengkapi keberhasilan dalam peringkat "A" British dan terpilih sebagai penanggung jawab perkumpulan atau asosiasi sekolah di Afrika (1961). Periode 1961-1962, ia adalah lulusan pertama di Universitas London dan memimpin gerakan pemuda ANC (1962). Tahun 1966, ia meraih gelar Master dari Universitas Sussex. Periode 1967-1970, ia membuka kantor ANC di London dan belajar militer di Uni Soviet.
Tahun 1971, Mbeki menjadi Asisten Sekretaris Revolusi ANC di Lusaka. Karier politiknya mencapai puncak kejayaan setelah memimpin ANC di Botswana (1973), anggota Komite Nasional Eksekutif ANC (1975), menjabat Direktur Departemen Informasi (1984), dan Wakil Presiden Afrika Selatan
Puncak kebesarannya Presiden Nelson Mandela terjadi tahun 1997 saat tongkat kepemimpinan partai diserahkan kepada Mbeki. Meski secara seremonial tetap presiden Afrika Selatan sampai tahun 1999, Mandela telah merintis penyerahan tongkat kekuasaan kepada generasi pemimpin yang lebih muda yaitu Wakil Presiden Thabo Mbeki.
Penyerahan tongkat estafet kepemimpinan negara terjadi pada 14 Juni 1999 ketika Wakil Presiden Thabo Mbeki dipilih parlemen menjadi Presiden Afrika Selatan. Anggota parlemen yang terdiri tidak kurang 400 orang melakukan pertemuan untuk pelantikan presiden terpilih. Presiden Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki resmi menjabat sejak 16 Juni 1999.

Exile and Return
After the arrest and imprisonment of Sisulu, Mandela and his father, and facing a similar fate, Thabo Mbeki left South Africa as one of a number of young ANC militants sent abroad to continue their education and their anti-apartheid activities. He ultimately spent 28 years in exile, only returning to his homeland after the release of Nelson Mandela.
Mbeki spent some of his exile in the United Kingdom, earning a Master of Economics degree from the University of Sussex and then working in the ANC's London office; he also received military training in what was then the Soviet Union and lived at different times in Zambia, Botswana, Swaziland and Nigeria.
While Thabo Mbeki was in exile, his brother Jama Mbeki was murdered by agents of the Lesotho government in 1982. His son Kwanda–the product of a liaison in Mbeki's teenage years–was killed while trying to leave South Africa and join his father in exile. When Thabo Mbeki was reunited with his father, the elder Mbeki told a reporter, "You must remember that Thabo Mbeki is no longer my son. He is my comrade!" A news article pointed out that this was an expression of pride, explaining, "For Govan Mbeki, a son was a mere biological appendage; to be called a comrade, on the other hand, was the highest honour." [3]
Certainly, Thabo Mbeki devoted his life to the ANC, and as his years in exile continued, he rose to increasingly responsible roles. Mbeki was appointed head of the ANC's information department in 1984 and of its international department in 1989. While in these roles, he was close to Oliver Tambo, who served as a powerful mentor. In 1985, he was a member of a delegation that began meeting with representatives of the South African business community, and in 1989, he led the ANC delegation that conducted secret talks with the South African government. These talks led to the unbanning of the ANC and the release of political prisoners. He also participated in many of the other important discussions between the ANC and the government that eventually led to the democratization of South Africa. [4]
In 1993, he was elected as the chairperson of the ANC, succeeding Tambo, and then became president of the ANC in 1997, a position he continues to hold.
He became a deputy president of South Africa in May 1994 on the attainment of universal suffrage, and sole deputy-president in June 1996. He succeeded Nelson Mandela as ANC president in December 1997 and as president of the Republic in June 1999 (inaugurated on June 16); he was subsequently reelected for a second term in April 2004.

Role in African Politics
Mbeki has been a notably powerful figure in African politics, positioning South Africa as a regional powerbroker and also promoting the idea that African political conflicts should be solved by Africans. He headed the formation of both NEPAD and the African Union and has played influential roles in brokering peace deals in Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo. He has also tried to popularise the concept of an African Renaissance. He sees African dependence on aid and foreign intervention as a major barrier to the continent being taken seriously in the world of economics and politics, and sees structures like NEPAD and the AU as part of a process in which Africa solves its own problems without relying on outside assistance.

Economic Policies
Some South African political analysts have seen a split within the ANC between the "prisoner" generation, ANC leaders like Mandela and others who studied political theory with each other while in prison; and the "exiles" like Mbeki, who studied economics in Western universities and helped the ANC-in-exile gain credibility with Western nations and corporations. Since Mbeki and his exile counterparts were responsible for representing the ANC to the West during the ANC's successful efforts to isolate the apartheid government internationally in the 1980s, they may have been more acutely conscious of the compromises that the ANC would have to make once it gained power.
Further, few in the ANC anticipated the economic shambles of the sanctions-hobbled and high-spending apartheid government; rather than redistributing a massive inheritance of white economic power, the ANC was forced into austerity measures and deficit reduction.
To many, Nelson Mandela represents the emotional warmth of the older brand of socialist politics of the ANC. But even during Mandela's presidency and certainly after it, Mbeki and his allies within government emphasized market-oriented approaches to South African economic policy. And even beyond the difficulties of inheriting the debts of apartheid, philosophically Mbeki appears to believe that economic growth is a precondition of economic redistribution. Additionally, he has emphasized avoidance of debt as a way of maintaining political and economic independence for the newly democratic state.
As the CIA Factbook summarizes it, "South African economic policy is fiscally conservative, but pragmatic, focusing on targeting inflation and liberalizing trade as means to increase job growth and household income." [5] Mbeki has emphasized that any policy that would redistribute wealth at the expense of economic growth and deficit reduction would ultimately put the nation into a downward spiral of market shrinkage and debt accumulation. He has pointed to Zimbabwe's post-liberation direction as an example of the dangers of an overly redistributive approach.
Like so many things in South Africa, this policy choice has difficult racial implications: the ANC must walk a difficult balance between pleasing the white-dominated business community—which might have taken its capital elsewhere under a more explicitly socialist regime—and keeping the ANC's promises to its core constituency of the impoverished black majority. Mbeki explains his policies in Africanist terms, and believes deeply in the idea of black empowerment. But he does so by tuning his policies to the constraints of market forces rather than attempting to overturn capitalism's organizing principles, as earlier generations of liberation politicians might have attempted to do.
This policy direction, embodied by the Growth, Employment And Redistribution (GEAR) program, has often been unpopular with leftist constituencies inside and outside of the ANC, including ANC-affiliated labor unions within the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the non-party-affiliated "social movements" which have protested against Mbeki's policies on AIDS, service delivery (e.g., the government's insistence on payment from the poor for utilities like electricity and water), and land redistribution.
The largest opposition party, the more free-market-oriented Democratic Alliance, has sometimes criticized affirmative action efforts or other policies oriented towards redressing apartheid's inequalities, as have smaller political groups. Nonetheless, the business community inside and outside of the country has retained faith in the ANC government to a degree that defies many pre-democracy predictions.
And although unemployment remains high and black poverty remains the rule rather than the exception, the economy overall has grown. Perhaps as a result, most South Africans remain loyal to the ANC and to Mbeki's government, and are willing to see economic transformation and redistribution of wealth as a long-term and gradual process.

Political Style
Mbeki has sometimes been characterized as remote and academic, although in his second campaign for Presidency in 2004, many observers described him as finally relaxing into a more traditional campaign mode, sometimes dancing at events and even kissing babies. Nonetheless, the fact that this was remarkable confirms the broader observation that Mbeki is a man who values the exercise of centralized policy over demonstrations of grassroots populism.
Mbeki's thinking can often be found in his weekly column in the ANC newsletter ANC Today [6], where he often produces long discourses on a variety of topics. He sometimes uses his column to deliver pointed invectives against political opponents, and at other times uses it as a kind of professor of political theory, educating ANC cadres on the intellectual justifications for ANC policy. Although these columns are remarkable for their dense prose, they nonetheless often manage to make news. And although Mbeki does not generally make a point of befriending or courting reporters, his columns and news events have often yielded good results for his administration by ensuring that his message is a primary driving force of news coverage [7] Indeed, in initiating his columns, Mbeki stated his view that the bulk of South African media sources did not speak for or to the South African majority, and stated his intent to use ANC Today to speak directly to his constituents rather than through the media. [8]

Mbeki and the Internet
Unlike many world leaders, Mbeki appears to be at ease with the Internet and willing to quote from it. For instance, in a column [9] discussing Hurricane Katrina, he cited Wikipedia, quoted at length a discussion of Katrina's lessons on American inequality from the Native American publication Indian Country Today ([10]), and then included excerpts from a David Brooks column in the New York Times in a discussion of why the events of Katrina illustrated the necessity for global development and redistribution of wealth.
His penchant for quoting diverse and sometimes obscure sources, both from the Internet and from a wide variety of books, makes his column an interesting parallel to political blogs although the ANC does not describe it in these terms. His views on AIDS (see below) were supported by Internet searching which led him to so-called "AIDS dissident" websites; in this case, Mbeki's use of the Internet was roundly criticized and even ridiculed by opponents. The view that the internet was the basis for his views on AIDS, however, is not likely the case; and as a widely-read man who frequently cites books unavailable to most except in scholarly libraries, he clearly uses the internet as only one of his sources of information.

Controversies: Zimbabwe
Due to South Africa's proximity, strong trade links, and similar struggle credentials, South Africa is in a unique, and possibly solitary, position to influence politics in Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe's economic slide since 2000 has been a matter of increasing concern to Britain (as the former colonial power) and other donors to that country, and high-ranking diplomatic visits to South Africa have repeatedly attempted to persuade Mbeki to take a harder line with his erstwhile comrade, Robert Mugabe over takeovers of private farms by groups of Mugabe-allied war veterans, freedom of the press, and independence of the judiciary.
To the West's concern, Mbeki has never publicly criticised Mugabe's policies - preferring 'quiet diplomacy' rather than 'megaphone diplomacy', his term for the West's increasingly shrill condemnation of Mugabe's rule.
To quote Mbeki - The point really about all this from our perspective has been that the critical role we should play is to assist the Zimbabweans to find each other, really to agree among themselves about the political, economic, social, other solutions that their country needs. We could have stepped aside from that task and then shouted, and that would be the end of our contribution...They would shout back at us and that would be the end of the story. I'm actually the only head of government that I know anywhere in the world who has actually gone to Zimbabwe and spoken publicly very critically of the things that they are doing.

2002 Presidential elections
Mugabe faced a critical presidential election in 2002. The runup was shadowed by a difficult decision to suspend Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth. The full meeting of the Commonwealth had failed in a consensus to decide on the issue, and they tasked the previous, present (at the time), and future leaders of Commonwealth - (respectively President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, John Howard of Australia, and Mbeki of South Africa) to come to a consensus between them over the issue. On March 20, 2002 (10 days after the elections, that Mugabe won) Howard announced that they had agreed to suspend Zimbabwe for a year.

2005 parliamentary elections
In the face of recent passage of laws restricting public assembly and freedom of the media, muzzling campaigning by the MDC for the 2005 Zimbabwe parliamentary elections, President Mbeki was quoted as saying: I have no reason to think that anything will happen … that anybody in Zimbabwe will act in a way that will militate against the elections being free and fair. [ ...] As far as I know, things like an independent electoral commission, access to the public media, the absence of violence and intimidation … those matters have been addressed.
Current deputy-president Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka (Minerals and Energy Minister at that time) led the largest foreign observer mission to oversee the elections. That observer mission congratulated the people of Zimbabwe for holding a peaceful, credible and well-mannered election which reflects the will of the people.
The elections were denounced in the west, who accused Zanu-PF of using food to buy votes, and large discrepancies in the tallying of votes.

Dialogue between Zanu-PF and MDC
Mbeki has been attempting to restore dialogue between Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change in the face of denials from both parties. A fact-finding mission in 2004 by COSATU to Zimbabwe led to their widely-publicised deportation back to South Africa which reopened the debate, even within the ANC, as to whether Mbeki's policy of 'quiet diplomacy' is constructive.
On February 5 2006 Mbeki said in an interview with SABC television that Zimbabwe had missed a chance to resolve its political crisis in 2004 when secret talks to agree on a new constitution ended in failure. He claimed that he saw a copy of a new constitution signed by all parties. [11] The job of promoting dialogue between the ruling party and the opposition was likely made more difficult by divisions within the MDC, splits to which the president alluded when he stated that the MDC were "sorting themselves out." [12] In turn, the MDC unanimously rejected this assertion. MDC secretary general Welshman Ncube said "We never gave Mbeki a draft constitution - unless it was ZANU PF which did that. Mbeki has to tell the world what he was really talking about." [13]

Business response
On January 10, 2006, businessman Warren Clewlow, who serves on the boards of four of the top 10 listed companies in SA, including Old Mutual, Sasol, Nedbank and Barloworld, said that government should stop its unsuccessful behind-the-scenes attempts to resolve the Zimbabwean crisis and start vociferously condemning what was happening in that country. Clewlow's sentiments, a clear indicator that the private sector is getting increasingly impatient with government's "quiet diplomacy" policy on Zimbabwe, were echoed by Business Unity SA (Busa), the umbrella body for all business organisations in the country. [14]
As the company's chairman, he said in Barlowold's latest annual report that SA's efforts to date were fruitless and that the only means for a solution was for SA "to lead from the front. Our role and responsibility is not just to promote discussion... Our aim must be to achieve meaningful and sustainable change."