His Excellency Welile Nhlapo, South African ambassador to the United States, will speak on “South Africa Today: Challenges and Opportunities” Wednesday, March 4 , at noon in the Harold B. Lee Library Auditorium at Brigham Young University.
Nhlapo was appointed ambassador to the U.S. in 2007, having served previously as ambassador to Ethiopia and permanent representative to the Organization of African Unity and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa since 1995.
During his term in Addis Ababa, Nhlapo served as South Africa’s nonresident ambassador to Djibouti, Eritrea and Sudan. In 1997, he was appointed South Africa’s special envoy on Burundi.
Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, Nhlapo was active in the South African Students Organization, co-authoring the publication “Black Review” on the activities of black organizations. After receiving a banning order in 1973, he went into exile to Botswana, where he joined the African National Congress.
Nhlapo was a part of the South African delegation to the UN General Assembly in New York when South Africa was readmitted to the world body in 1994, after which he became director of the Africa Division in the Department of Political Affairs at the UN.
This lecture will be archived online. For more information on events sponsored by the David M. Kennedy Center for International Studies, see the calendar online at kennedy.byu.edu. For more information about this lecture, contact Lee Simons at (801) 422-2652.
Writer: Angela Fischer
