With the resignation of former president Jacob Zuma late on Valentine’s Day, Mzansi did not only look forward to having a new president in Cyril Ramaphosa, but also a new first lady in his wife Tshepo Motsepe.
READ: MEET MZANSI'S NEW FIRST LADY!
South Africa has had a total of seven first ladies since democracy, not counting Nelson Mandela’s daughter Zindzi Mandela, now Hlungwane, who was once the stand in first lady after her father’s divorce from her mother Winnie Madikizela Mandela in 1996.
An activist and prominent politician in her own right, Madikizela Mandela will go down in history as Mzansi’s first post apartheid first lady.
She would be succeeded by former Mozambican first lady Graca Machel who only held office for one year.
Mchel has served on the boards of numerous international organisations, including the UN Foundation, the Forum of African Women Educationalists, the African Leadership Forum and the International Crisis Group.
Replacing her the following year would be then president Thabo Mbeki’s wife, Zanele Mbeki, who holds a Bachelor of Science - Social Sciences from Wits and was a social worker by profession.
One of her notable accomplishments is that she established the Women's Development Bank Trust.
After Thabo Mbeki’s reign as president came to an end in 2008, so too did his wife’s stint as first lady, paving the way for interim president Kgalema Motlanthe’s wife, Mapula Motlanthe. They later divorced in 2014.
In 2009, it was the turn of Jacob Zuma’s first Wife, Sizakele MaKhumalo Zuma.
MaKhumalo is the founder of the Sizakhele MaKhumalo Zuma Foundation.
She was succeeded by fellow wife Nompumelelo Ntuli Zuma in 2014 for Jacob Zuma’s second term in office.
As of 15 February 2018, Mzansi had its seventh first lady in the form of medical doctor Tshepo Motsepe, the sister of billionaire Patrice Motsepe and Julia Radebe who is the wife of politician Jeff Radebe.
