Ramaphosa pays tribute to Frene Ginwala

The first speaker of SA’s democratic parliament, Frene Ginwala, has died at the age of 90.

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s office announced on Friday that Ginwala died at home on Thursday after a stroke two weeks ago.

“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,” said Ramaphosa.

Born Frene Noshir Ginwala on April 25 1932, she served the anti-apartheid struggle and SA’s democratic dispensation in various roles as a lawyer, academic, politician, activist and journalist.

Presidency spokesperson Vincent Magwenya said Ginwala was honoured with the Order of Luthuli in Silver in 2005 for her contribution to the struggle against gender oppression and her tireless contribution to the struggle for a non-sexist, nonracial, just and democratic SA.

Ramaphosa said: “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 SA.

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

“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.

“Ginwala was similarly influential and instrumental in shaping the advancement of democracy and the entrenchment of democratic political processes and fundamental socioeconomic rights in the Southern African Development Community and the continent.

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

“We have 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 SA to which they devoted their all.”

Magwenya said the government respects the family’s wishes for a private funeral.

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