Parliament’s Presiding Officers are deeply saddened by the passing away yesterday afternoon of Ms Nosipho Dorothy Ntwanambi, the Chief Whip of the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) in the fourth democratic Parliament and the first woman to hold this position in the NCOP.
She became a member of the National Assembly after the May 2014 national and provincial election.
Ms Ntwanambi, who was born on 25 September 1959 in Gugulethu, on the Cape Flats, held key positions in African National Congress (ANC) structures. She was a member of the ANC’s National Executive Committee, Deputy President of the ANC Women’s League and member of ANC Western Cape Provincial structures.
The eldest daughter of five, Ms Ntwanambi joined the ANC during the 1976 uprisings when oppressed African, coloured and Indian students across South Africa protested against the use of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in African schools.
Ms Ntwanambi attended Fezeka High School, in the Western Cape, a school at the centre of the 1976 protests.
She went on to teach at Siyazingisa Primary School from 1983 to 1997 but continued her public and clandestine political involvement.
In 1983 she became active in the United Women’s Organisation and in 1985 she helped found the Democratic Teachers’ Union, which later became part of the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union. Her incarceration in Cape Town’s Pollsmoor prison did nothing to deter her.
Ms Ntwanambi became a permanent delegate to the NCOP in 1999 and was elected Chairperson of the NCOP’s Select Committee on Economic and Foreign Affairs in 2004.
In 2005, she was also elected Chairperson of the Parliamentary Women’s Caucus and served in the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association Assembly and the South African Development Community Parliamentary Forum.
She became the first woman to be elected as Chief Whip of the NCOP in 2008 and was re-elected to the position in May 2009, when the fourth democratic Parliament was established.
Ms. Ntwanambi leaves her two daughters - and the many people who helped bring our democracy to birth.
May she rest in eternal peace.
