Mr Rob Davies

Before being appointed in May 2009 as minister of trade and industry, Rob Davies served four years as deputy minister in the same portfolio. A member of parliament in the National Assembly since 1994, he chaired the parliamentary portfolio committees on finance and on trade and industry. Davies participated in the Seattle, Dohar, Cancun and Hong Kong rounds of World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks as part of the South African ministerial delegation. In exile in Britain and Mozambique from the 1970s, he worked at the Centre for African Studies at the University of Maputo until returning to South Africa in 1990, when he became co-director of the Centre for Southern African Studies at the University of the Western Cape. Davies holds a BA Honours in economics from Rhodes University, a MA in international relations from the University of Southampton, and a Ph D in political studies from the University of Sussex. He is a member of the central committee and politburo of the South African Communist Party (SACP).