South African media on Monday said the election of Home Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma as the first female head of the African Union Commission was a watershed and a victory for the region.<\/p>\n
Dlamini-Zuma beat incumbent Jean Ping of Gabon in a closely fought election over several rounds of voting late Sunday at the AU summit in Addis Ababa.<\/p>\n
She is the first person from the region to head the organisation since its birth in South Africa 10 years ago.<\/p>\n
“SADC victory” said the Business Day in a front-page headline, referring to the 15-member Southern African Development Community which backed her candidacy.<\/p>\n
“First female AU boss” was a front-page teaser in The Star daily, with the inside story headlined “Dlamini-Zuma finally pips Ping to AU post”.<\/p>\n
Local radio stations interrupted scheduled programming late Sunday to break the news of Dlamini-Zuma’s election. Her election also dominated radio talk shows Monday morning.<\/p>\n
Her victory ends a six-month impasse over the job, which had divided the continent.<\/p>\n
Her former husband, South African President Jacob Zuma, was one of the first to offer his congratulations after the vote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
South African media on Monday said the election of Home Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma as the first female head of the African Union Commission was a watershed and a victory for the region. Dlamini-Zuma beat incumbent Jean Ping of Gabon in a closely fought election over several rounds of voting late Sunday at the AU … Continue reading “Dlamini-Zuma becomes head of African Union”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[557,555,556,515],"class_list":["post-734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-south-africa","tag-addis-ababa","tag-african-union","tag-jean-ping","tag-nkosazana-dlamini-zuma"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=734"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":736,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734\/revisions\/736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}