Welile Nhlapo

Welile Nhlapo was appointed to his current position in January 2010. He was among the first officials to form part of a delegation that accompanied President Mandela to the United Nations General Assembly in 1994. The next year he was appointed as South African ambassador to Ethiopia and as permanent representative to the Organisation of African Unity and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa.

In 1997 Ambassador Nhlapo was appointed as South Africa’s special envoy to Burundi where he also served as nonresident ambassador to Djibouti, Eritrea and Sudan. Welile Nhlapo has assisted in the mediation of conflicts in countries such as Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Madagascar, Zimbabwe, Libya, the Ivory Coast, Fiji and Somalia. Ambassador Nhlapo became South Africa’s special envoy for the Burundi peace process in his capacity as the Director-General of the Presidential Support Unit. In August 2007 he assumed the post as South African ambassador to the United States, and became head of the Department of Political Affairs: Africa Division at the United Nations in New York. He is currently President Zuma’s national security advisor and South Africa’s special representative to the Great Lakes Region.