6 ANC comrades aren’t returning to Parliament, reveals Mbalula

ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula has announced that some of its senior leaders, who have served the party for decades, are not returning to Parliament and will be retiring from politics after the May elections.

Mbalula was speaking on Monday, 11 March 2024, at Luthuli House, where journalists had gathered to hear party leaders, such as former president Kgalema Motlanthe, speak about the election lists for the 2024 polls.

This comes after party spokesperson Mahlengi Bhengu-Motsiri, last Friday, said 31 party members had decline nomination for Parliament.

“Amongst those [31] are comrades who have served the movement admirably for decades and to whom we owe a sincere debt of gratitude for their contribution to shaping the first 30 years of South African democracy,” Bhengu-Motsiri said.

Gordhan, Tshwete among those who won’t be part of seventh Parliament

Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma

Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma became the first women to Chair the African Union Commission after she was appointed n by the Heads of State in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 2009 according to the World Bank.

Zuma is a trailblazer in the upliftment and empowerment of women across the African continent. She became an active underground member of the ANC and rose to become deputy president of the South African Students Organisation in 1976.

During the same year, she fled into exile, completing medical studies at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom (UK) in 1978. After the 1994 elections, Dr Dlamini Zuma was appointed as Minister of Health in the cabinet of then President Nelson Mandela.

Pravin Gordhan

Pravin Gordhan’s involvement in the anti-apartheid struggle goes back to the 1970s and 1980s when he was an organiser in the student movement and a prominent leader in civic structures.

According to his biography, he qualified as a pharmacist in 1974 and worked at the Durban’s King Edward VIII hospital as a pharmacist till 1981. However, he was expelled by the hospital due to his involvement in resistance politics.

He spent four years underground in the 1980s, during which time he became involved in the South African Communist Party and African National Congress. He served as an ANC MP until March 1998, when he joined SARS as Deputy Commissioner, rising to become its Commissioner in November 1999.

In May 2009, he was appointed the Minister of Finance and became Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs in May 2014. He was reappointed as Minister of Finance in December 2015. He served as member of the National Executive Committee in the African National Congress from December 2012. He is currently Minister of Public Enterprises.

Pam Tshwete

Pam Tshwete is a Member of the National Assembly, she became the member of the African National Congress (ANC) in exile and later re-joined the party as an ANC branch leader in her hometown Peelton in the Eastern Cape.

“I was active in recruiting people in the rural area of Peelton. I was appointed ANC Women’s League Convener intervene in the Eastern Cape in order to intervene in the League’s crisis at the time. I also served in the ANC and ANC Women’s League Provincial Executive Committees in the Eastern Cape,” says Tshwete in her biography.

She says that she’s been a member of the ANC Women’s League National Executive Committee (NEC) since 2013 andl aso currently serves on the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the ANC.

Tshwete is the Deputy Minister of Human Settlements. She was previously the Deputy Minister of Water and Sanitation from 2014 to 2019.

Amos Masondo

Nkosiyakhe Amos Masondo is the Chairperson of the National Council of Provinces, one of the two Houses of the Parliament of the Republic of South Africa. He was elected to this position after May 2019 national general elections in South Africa.

He is a founding member of the United Democratic Front. He was imprisoned on Robben Island from 1976 to 1981 for his participation in the liberation struggle. He was again detained under the emergency regulations from June 1985 to March 1986 and again from July 1986 to 1989.

He was the Mayor of the City of Johannesburg from 2001 to 2011 He first became a Member of Parliament, serving in the National Assembly, from May 2014 until May 2019. In the National Assembly, he was appointed to the Joint Committee on Ethics and in the Portfolio Committee on Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs.

He has been awarded many awards and recognised for various achievements on governance.

Yunus Carrim

Yunus Carrim has been a political activist since 1971 while at high school in Pietermaritzburg, now Msunduzi, in KwaZulu Natal (KZN). His politically activity took him to the University of Durban-Westville and into in the United Democratic Front (UDF) structures in the early 1980’s before he was elected to the Natal Indian Congress executive in 1987.

He had two brief spells in detention from 1976 for 4 months to 1986 for 2 weeks. Since 1990 served in the ANC Regional Executive Committee and several SACP structures, and since 1995 in the SACP Central Committee and Politburo.

Carrim was elected to Parliament in 1994, chaired several portfolio committees and currently chair the NCOP Select Committee on Finance. He served as Deputy Minister of CoGTA from 2009 to 2013 and Minister of Communications from July 2013 to May 2014.

John Jeffery

John Jeffery is South Africa’s Deputy Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development and a member of the ruling ANC.

He studied law at the University of Natal and holds BA and LLB degrees, as well as a postgraduate diploma in environmental law, all from the University of Natal. He is an admitted Attorney of the High Court of South Africa.

 After South Africa’s transition to a constitutional democracy in 1994, Jeffery became a member of the KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Legislature where he chaired the Environment and Conservation Portfolio Committee.  

He’s been a member of the National Assembly of Parliament since 1999 and is a former member of the Portfolio Committee on Justice and Constitutional Development. He was appointed as Deputy Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development in July 2013 and was re-appointed in 2019 by President Cyril Ramaphosa for a second term of office.

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