Sithembile Mbete

Dr Sithembile Mbete is a political scientist with over 15 years of experience working in academia, civil society and government. She has a PhD in International Relations from the University of Pretoria (UP) where she is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Political Sciences. She joined the University of Pretoria from The Presidency of South Africa where she was a researcher in the secretariat of the National Planning Commission contributing to the drafting of the National Development Plan in the areas of public service reform, anti-corruption policy and community safety.

From 2021 to 2023 Sithembile was seconded to Futurelect, a non-profit and non-partisan political training programme for emerging public leaders in Africa, where she worked as Director of Programmes. In 2021 she served as a member of the Ministerial Committee on the Electoral System. She served on the Council of the Private Security Industry Regulatory Authority (PSiRA) from 2021 to 2023.

She completed her undergraduate, honours and masters degrees at the University of Cape Town. From 2020 to 2023, Sithembile was a research associate of the African Leadership Centre (ALC) at King’s College London. Her research interests include global governance with a focus on the United Nations, global populism and South African electoral politics and political parties. Sithembile has published on elections and political parties in accredited journals. Her work has also been published by think tanks and research institutions. Her research has been funded by the Ford Foundation, National Institute for Humanities and Social Science (NIHSS), Open Society Foundation (OSF), National Research Foundation (NRF), the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and the Mellon Foundation. Her most recent research publication, with the Friedrich-Ebert Stiftung (FES), is on South Africa’s role in the changing multilateral order.

Sithembile has consulted on political risk for several domestic and international organisations in the public and private sectors. Aside from her academic research, Sithembile has written articles for media outlets including Business Day, Mail and Guardian, The Continent, and The Conversation Africa. She comments frequently on a range of political issues in South African and international media including the Financial Times, the New York Times, Al Jazeera, BBC World News, CNN, SABC, NewzroomAfrika, Voice of America, and others.