Biography

Dr Sithembile Mbete is a political scientist with over 15 years of experience working in academia, civil society and government. She is the Executive Director of the Public Affairs Research Institute (PARI), a research institute focused on building democratic and effective state institutions in South Africa. Sithembile has a DPhil in International Relations from the University of Pretoria (UP), where she was a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Political Sciences for nearly a decade. In 2021, she served as a member of South Africa’s Ministerial Advisory Committee on the Electoral System.   

Prior to UP, 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. Sithembile comments frequently on a range of political issues in South African and international media and has served on the well-known civil society organisations since 2014.