President Cyril Ramaphosa has paid a tribute to Frene Ginwala, the speaker of South Africa’s first democratic parliament who died on Thursday after suffering a stroke two weeks ago.
Ramaphosa extended his condolences to Ginwala’s friends, colleagues and associates in South Africa and beyond.
“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 [even during her] last days,” Ramaphosa said on Friday.
The president said among many roles Ginwala adopted in her political career, South Africa is duty-bound to recall her establishment of the first democratic parliament which exercised the task of undoing decades-old apartheid legislation and fashioning the legislative foundations of a free and democratic country.
“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.
“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 keeping building the South Africa to which they devoted their all.”
Ginwala was the speaker of parliament from 1994 until 2004. After retirement as speaker, she continued serving in a number of international organisations including UN subsidiaries, as trustee of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, and as chancellor of the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
In September 2007, former president Thabo Mbeki appointed her to conduct an inquiry into national director of public prosecutions boss Vusi Pikoli’s fitness to hold office.
She decided in favour of Pikoli, but criticised poor communication between government departments. She also criticised the director-general of the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development, advocate Menzi Simelane, whose testimony was contradictory and without basis in fact or law.
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