Former speaker of Parliament Dr Frene Ginwala dies

The founding Speaker of South Africa’s first democratic Parliament, Dr Frene Ginwala, has passed away at the age of 90.

Ginwala died on Thursday night following a stroke two weeks ago, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced her passing in a statement.

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Ramaphosa has extended his condolences to Ginwala’s family, friends, colleagues and associates in South Africa and beyond.

“On behalf of the nation and of the legislative, executive and judicial components of the State, the president offers his sincere condolences to Dr Ginwala’s family, her nephews Cyrus, Sohrab and Zavareh, and their families,” said Presidency spokesperson Vincent Magwenya.

Magwenya confirmed Ginwala will be buried during a private funeral. It is unclear when the funeral will be held.

“Government respects the family’s wishes for a private funeral.”

Magwenya said details of an official memorial event will be announced in due course.

Ginwala’s contribution to SA’s democracy

Ginwala was born on 25 April 1932, in Johannesburg.

She served the anti-apartheid struggle and South Africa’s democratic dispensation in a diversity of roles as a lawyer, academic, political leader, activist and journalist.

In 2005, she was honoured with the Order of Luthuli in Silver for her excellent contribution to the struggle against gender oppression and her tireless contribution to the struggle for a non-sexist, non-racial, just and democratic South Africa.

‘A formidable patriot and leader’

Ramaphosa has described Ginwala as a formidable patriot and leader, who played an important role in the country’s inaugural democratic Parliament in 1994.

“Today we mourn the passing of a formidable patriot and leader of our nation, and an internationalist to whom justice and democracy around the globe remained an impassioned objective to her last days.

“Among the many roles, she adopted in the course of a life she led to the full, we are duty-bound to recall her establishment of our democratic Parliament which exercised the task of undoing decades-old apartheid legislation and fashioning the legislative foundations of the free and democratic South Africa.

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“Many of the rights and material benefits South Africans enjoy today have their origins in the legislative programme of the inaugural democratic Parliament under Dr Ginwala’s leadership, with Nelson Mandela occupying the seat of the first president to be elected by the democratic Parliament,” the president said.

‘Special generation of leaders’

Ramaphosa said South Africa lost another giant among “a special generation of leaders to whom we owe our freedom and to whom we owe our commitment to keep building the South Africa to which they devoted their all”.

“Frene Ginwala epitomised the ethos and expectations of our then fledgling Constitution and played an important role in building the capacity of Parliament through the transformation of activists and leaders into lawmakers who were, in turn, able to transform our country.

“Dr Ginwala was similarly influential and instrumental in shaping the advancement of democracy and the entrenchment of democratic political processes and fundamental socio-economic rights in the Southern African Development Community and the continent at large.

“Beyond African shores, she positioned our young democracy both as one that had as much to contribute to as it had to learn from global precedents and experience.”

Compiled by Thapelo Lekabe

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