PENUELL MPAPA MADUNA, MINISTER OF JUSTICE OF SOUTH AFRICA, ELECTED PRESIDENT OF TENTH UNITED NATIONS CRIME CONGRESS
Press Release
BIO/3286
SOC/CP/217
PENUELL MPAPA MADUNA, MINISTER OF JUSTICE OF SOUTH AFRICA, ELECTED PRESIDENT OF TENTH UNITED NATIONS CRIME CONGRESS
20000410(Received from a UN Information Officer.)
VIENNA, 10 April -- Penuell Mpapa Maduna, the Minister of Justice of South Africa, was elected this morning as President of the Tenth United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders, which opened this morning in Vienna.
Mr. Maduna, who was appointed to his present post last June, was previously the South African Minister of Minerals and Energy (1996-1999) and Deputy Minister of Home Affairs (1994-1996).
Mr. Maduna participated in many critical strategic meetings between the African National Congress (ANC) and sectors of South African society, particularly the White community, to pave the way for a negotiated settlement in South Africa.
From 1990 to 1994, Mr. Maduna was a member of the ANC team negotiating South Africas transformation from apartheid to democracy and the drafting of a new constitution. He was also a member of the ANC team that negotiated the adoption of the Record of Understanding on 26 September 1992 at the summit talks between Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk.
In 1990, he was a member of the ANC negotiating team for the first talks held in South Africa at the Groot Schuur, and was one of the first two ANC officials sent to launch the process of talks about talks that led to the inception of the negotiations that culminated in the historic elections of 1994 and the new Constitution. He played an active role in the formulation and adoption of the ANCs Constitutional Guidelines -- a precursor of the ANCs current human rights orientation, and was a founding member of the ANC Constitutional Committee to develop South Africas approach to a peaceful end to apartheid.
Concurrent with his present post, Mr. Maduna is a member of the National Executive Committee of the ANC and a Legal Adviser to the ANC.
He holds a Ph.D in Constitutional Law from the University of South Africa.
Mr. Maduna was born on 9 December 1952. He is married and has three children.
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