Baleka Mbete profile

Former teacher on the verge of becoming South Africa's first female president
Baleka Mbete (r) with Thabo Mbeki (l) at the opening of parliament in 2006
Baleka Mbete (r) with Thabo Mbeki (l) at the opening of parliament in 2006. Photograph: Nic Bothma/EPA

Should the South African speaker of parliament replace Thabo Mbeki as president, she will become the country's first female leader - albeit temporarily.

Baleka Mbete, 58, is an experienced political operator who has worked her way up through the ranks of the African National Congress (ANC) party. She was promoted from deputy speaker to speaker in April 2004, replacing another woman, Frene Ginwala, who had held the post since 1994.

Her elevation marked a long road from her early career as a teacher. She spent two years working in schools in the mid-1970s before going into exile in 1976 and spending more than a decade as an ANC official in Tanzania, Kenya, Botswana and Zimbabwe.

Mbete returned to South Africa in 1990 to join the ANC's interim leadership and was instrumental in re-establishing the party's women's league. She also served as ANC secretary general from 1991 to 1993.

Elected as an ANC MP in 1994, she became a key player in the constitutional assembly that drafted the 1996 constitution. In 1995 she was appointed chair of the ANC parliamentary caucus and became a member of the presidential panel on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. She became deputy speaker in May 1996.

Mbete attracted controversy two years ago when she took a costly chartered flight to Monrovia in Liberia to attend the inauguration of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Africa's first democratically elected female head of state. South Africa's Guardian and Mail accused Mbete of joining the "jet set".

South Africa has a good record on women's representation in parliament, due in part to the ANC's quotas for female candidates. According to the inter-parliamentary union, more than 30% of the country's parliamentary seats are held by women, compared to a European average of around 20%.

Mbete was born in Durban. She has three sons and two daughters.