Ramaphosa picks Ayanda Dlodlo as new ambassador to France - News24

President Cyril Ramaphosa will appoint Ayanda Dlodlo, a veteran of Cabinet and the liberation struggle, as South Africa’s new ambassador to Paris.

Ramaphosa’s spokesperson, Vincent Magwenya, confirmed the appointment days before the president is due in France for a three-day official visit, which will include talks with French President Emmanuel Macron.

The posting will see Dlodlo, 63, return to country duty after about four years with the World Bank as its group executive director for Angola, Nigeria and South Africa.

She served first as communications then as home affairs minister under former president Jacob Zuma. Ramaphosa gave her the sensitive state security portfolio, which she held during the July 2021 riots.

Dlodlo, who felt unfairly blamed by colleagues for intelligence failures prior to the unrest, was moved to public service and administration when Ramaphosa subsequently centralised state security in the Presidency.

She resigned within months to join the World Bank.

Dlodlo had by then survived a number of relatively minor controversies while in office. This included being blacklisted from doing business with the state for five years in 2012 after VIP Consulting Engineers bungled part of a R5.2 million tender where she was a listed director with Ekurhuleni metro. She had resigned from the company in 2009 after becoming an MP. Her resignation did not spare her from being blacklisted.

Considered a formidable, somewhat severe presence by her peers, Dlodlo grew up in exile in Swaziland and joined uMkhonto weSizwe when she was 17. She underwent military training in Angola and military intelligence training in the former Soviet Union.

“I can’t say I come from the poverty that drove other people to the Struggle. I wanted to go for the adventure,” she has been quoted as saying.

Paris will be her first diplomatic posting. The position has been vacant since Nathi Mthethwa’s death by suicide in the French capital in September 2025.

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