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SA MOURNS ANTI-APARTHEID HEROINE FRENE GINWALA

The anti apartheid activist, SA mourns anti-apartheid heroine Frene Ginwala passed away on Thursday at the age of 90 after suffering a stroke two weeks ago.

Ginwala became the founding speaker of South Africa’s first democratically elected parliament from 1994 until she retired in 2004, during the 1960s and 70s she lived in exile in Mozambique from where she helped many prominent members of the banned African National Congress (ANC) escape abroad. Ms Ginwala also travelled around the world drawing international attention to the abuses of the apartheid era.

When white-minority rule ended with the election of Nelson Mandela in 1994, Ms Ginwala was appointed speaker of the National Assembly.

President Cyril Ramaphosa said the country was mourning the passing of a formidable patriot.

“Among the many roles she adopted in the course of her life, [which] 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,” Ramaphosa said.

On her 90th birthday last year, Parliament said Ginwala had “laid a firm foundation for a democratic legislative sector. With her firm, erudite and no-nonsense leadership of the first democratic National Assembly, Dr Ginwala established solid and enduring oversight, law-making and participatory systems, which Parliament is still pursuing today”.

Ginwala had fostered the principles of non-sexism, non-racialism and equality and in 2005, Ginwala was awarded the Order of Luthuli in silver for her contribution to the struggle against gender oppression and for championing the course of non-sexism and non-racialism.

A National Assembly tribute added: “With her deep political experience, global perspective, razor-sharp mind, and intellectual rigour, she was instrumental in the democratic transformation of Parliament, consistent with the new constitutional order. Together with the first generation of presiding officers of Parliament and members, and under her astute leadership, she transformed Parliament from a bastion of colonial and apartheid oppression to a truly democratic and people-centred Parliament.”

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