Mbhazima Shilowa

Mbhazima Samuel Shilowa (born 30 April 1958) is a retired South African politician and former trade unionist. He was the third Premier of Gauteng between 1999 and 2008. He was formerly the general secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) between 1993 and 1999, and he later became a co-founder of the Congress of the People (Cope).

Born in the rural Northern Province, Shilowa became active in the trade union movement as a shop steward in Johannesburg in 1981. He rose through the ranks of the Transport and General Workers' Union before becoming Cosatu's deputy general secretary in 1991 and its general secretary in 1993. During this period he was also active in anti-apartheid politics, including as a member of Cosatu's Tripartite Alliance partners: he joined the Central Committee of the South African Communist Party in 1991 and joined the National Executive Committee of the African National Congress (ANC) in 1994.

After the June 1999 general election, Shilowa resigned as Cosatu general secretary to represent the ANC as Premier of Gauteng. The flagship policies of his administration included the construction of the Gautrain. Although he was re-elected to a second term as premier in the April 2004 general election, he resigned from the office on 29 September 2008; a political ally and personal friend of Thabo Mbeki, he resigned in protest of the ANC's decision to recall Mbeki from the national presidency.

In October 2008, he resigned his ANC membership to co-found an ANC breakaway party, COPE, with Mosiuoa Lekota. He became COPE's inaugural deputy president and, after the April 2009 general election, its chief whip in the National Assembly of South Africa. However, within 18 months, COPE was divided by an ongoing leadership contest between Lekota and Shilowa, who claimed to have been elected as COPE's new president by an abortive party conference in December 2010. The Lekota-led faction expelled Shilowa from the party in February 2011.