South Africa Dlamini-Zuma replaces Jean Ping at AU

Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma: The new African Union Commission head

The South African Home Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma was this weekend elected to head the African Union Commission bringing to end a leadership battle that has been going on in the organization.

Dlamini-Zuma comes to replace Gabonian Jean Ping who has been at the helm of the commission since 2008.

The 63-year-old Dlamini-Zuma becomes the first female head of the commission. She underwent three voting rounds before Ping was finally eliminated and a final confidence vote of 37 gave Zuma 60 per cent a mark that got her win.

“Now we have the African Union chair Madame Zuma, who will preside over the destiny of this institution,” Benin’s president and current AU chairman Thomas Boni Yayi said.

The contest to head the Commission of the 54-member AU had been deadlocked since last year, with neither Dlamini-Zuma nor Ping winning a two-thirds majority.

It pitted French-speaking states, largely backing Ping, against mostly English-speaking countries, especially in southern Africa, which gave their support to Dlamini-Zuma.

Her former husband, South African President Jacob Zuma, was one of the first to offer his congratulations after the vote.

Dlamini-Zuma will assume office as the African Union takes on several regional crises, including an Islamist militant insurgency in northern Mali and a rebellion in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo.