
Brigitte Mabandla
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Brigitte Sylvia Mabandla is a South African politician, lawyer and former anti-apartheid activist. After a decade studying and teaching law in Botswana and Zambia, she was a legal adviser to the ANC in Lusaka from 1986 to 1990. Thereafter she joined the party's delegation to the negotiations to end apartheid. She was appointed to the Government of National Unity by President Nelson Mandela, who named her as Deputy Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology in 1995. Her leadership in this position was central to one of the first human ancestor repatriations to Africa, this being the return of Sara Baartman to South Africa from France's Musée de l'Homme, and her subsequent reburial and memorialisation in her homeland in the Eastern Cape. She currently serves as South Africa's ambassador to Sweden.