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Obed Mlaba
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Obed Mlaba is the mayor of the eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality, which includes Durban, the second most populous city in South Africa.
He was born in 1943 in Ntambamhlope near Estcourt in KwaZulu-Natal. He holds an MBA in Strategic Marketing Management from the International Management Centre (United Kingdom). [1] He gained extensive experience in human resources and business development while working for the sugar firm Huletts, which developed out of the colonial plantation economy and remains the largest land owner in the city, and later at South African Breweries. He entered local government in 1994 as an ANC member and was appointed Chair of the Executive Committee of the Durban Metropolitan Council 1995. Mlaba was elected Metropolitan Mayor (ANC) in July 1996. He has completed two terms of office and is currently serving his third term. Critics have argued that he has misused the City's resources to channel vast amounts of money to his former employer, Huletts, via public subsidies for private developments.
In late 2005 the New York Times reported that shack dwellers in the Foreman Road shanty town had burnt an effigy of Mlaba after they had been attacked by the police and illegally banned from staging a march on the mayor to protest against his housing policy.[2]
In early 2006 he was heavily criticised for failing to condemn a series of political assassinations linked to the local government elections in the township of Umlazi where he has a home.