{"id":7810,"date":"2012-10-31T15:37:56","date_gmt":"2012-10-31T15:37:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/?p=7810"},"modified":"2012-11-08T14:24:12","modified_gmt":"2012-11-08T14:24:12","slug":"aus-first-female-leader-takes-office","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/2012\/10\/aus-first-female-leader-takes-office\/","title":{"rendered":"AU\u2019s first female leader takes office"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">On 15 October, following a ceremony at the headquarters of the African Un\u00adion (AU) in Addis Ababa, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, South Africa&#8217;s former home affairs minister, took up her post as chairperson of the AU Commission. She is the first female leader of the continental body, which was originally founded as the Organisation of African Unity in 1963.<\/span><span style=\"font-size: small;\"> <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Dlamini-Zuma was elected to the position in July following a bruising two-round con\u00adtest against the outgoing chairman, Jean Ping of Gabon. The election divided the continent largely along language lines: the francoph\u00adone states plus Nigeria and Ethiopia support\u00aded Ping&#8217;s candidacy, while the Anglophones, led by members of the Southern African Development Community, backed Dlamini- Zuma. There was widespread discontent with South Africa for breaking the unwritten convention that the five largest contributors to the AU budget (Nigeria, Egypt, Libya, Algeria and South Africa) should not contest the Commission&#8217;s highest office.<\/span><span style=\"font-size: small;\"> <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">After healing the rifts caused during the election process, Dlamini-Zuma will have to turn her attention to key security issues, including Mali, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the simmering ten\u00adsions between Sudan and South Sudan.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On 15 October, following a ceremony at the headquarters of the African Un\u00adion (AU) in Addis Ababa, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, South Africa&#8217;s former home affairs minister, took up her post as chairperson of the AU Commission. She is the first female leader of the continental body, which was originally founded as the Organisation of African Unity [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10673,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[130,103,42,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7810"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10673"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7810"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7810\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8106,"href":"https:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7810\/revisions\/8106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.global-briefing.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}