Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula

Nosiviwe Noluthando Mapisa-Nqakula (born 13 November 1956) is a South African politician who is currently serving as the Speaker of the National Assembly since August 2021.

Born on 13 November 1956 in Cape Town, Mapisa-Nqakula grew up in the Eastern Cape in what she later described as a conservative family.

She matriculated at Mount Arthur High School in Lady Frere and completed a primary teaching diploma at Bensonvale Teachers' College.

Her first job was as a teacher, and she later worked in youth development; she was also a founding member of the East London Domestic Workers Association in 1982.

Raised in the Eastern Cape, Mapisa-Nqakula trained as a teacher and worked in youth development until 1984, when she left South Africa to join Umkhonto we Sizwe in exile.

In 1984, with her husband Charles Nqakula, Mapisa-Nqakula left South Africa to enter exile with the anti-apartheid movement, undergoing military training with Umkhonto we Sizwe in Angola and the Soviet Union.

She spent the next six years in exile in the political and military structures of the African National Congress (ANC), beginning with a post in the Soviet Union in 1985 and later representing the ANC Women's Section, the interim exile equivalent of the ANC Women's League (ANCWL), at the Pan-African Women's Organisation from 1988 to 1990.

She returned to the country in 1990 and became a national organiser for the newly relaunched ANC Women's League; she was later its secretary-general from 1993 to 1997 under league president Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.

In 1990, after the ANC was unbanned by the apartheid government to facilitate the negotiations to end apartheid, Mapisa-Nqakula returned to South Africa on the party's instructions to help rebuild its internal organisation.

She worked for the newly relaunched ANCWL as a national organiser and was also elected as a member's of the league's National Executive Committee in 1990.

In December 1993, at the ANCWL's second national conference since its relaunch, she was elected to succeed Baleka Mbete as secretary-general of the ANCWL, serving under league president Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.

She joined the National Assembly as a backbencher in the April 1994 general election and chaired Parliament's Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence from 1996 to 2001.

While still serving as ANCWL secretary-general, Mapisa-Nqakula stood as an ANC candidate in the April 1994 general election and was elected to a seat in the National Assembly, the lower house of the South African Parliament.

After two years as a backbencher, she succeeded Lindiwe Sisulu as chairperson of Parliament's Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence in September 1996.

She held that office until she was succeeded by Bathabile Dlamini in 1997, although she was a member of the group of 11 league leaders who resigned from their offices in February 1995 in protest of Madikizela-Mandela's leadership.

Her political rise accelerated during the presidency of Thabo Mbeki, with whom she was close; in December 2001, she was appointed as Chief Whip of the Majority Party, and merely six months later she became Deputy Minister of Home Affairs under Minister Mangosuthu Buthelezi.

While she was still in that position, in August 2001, she was appointed as deputy chairperson of the ANC's new 22-member political committee in Parliament, chaired by Deputy President Jacob Zuma.

In December 2001, the ANC announced that it would appoint Mapisa-Nqakula to succeed fraud-accused Tony Yengeni as Chief Whip of the Majority Party.

The Mail & Guardian reported that she had "lobbied long and hard" for the promotion.

She soon oversaw a major reshuffle of the ANC's parliamentary caucus, and she was praised "for her energy and efficiency".

In addition, both she and her husband were known to be close to, and highly loyal to, President Thabo Mbeki.

During this period, she was labelled a "rising star" in politics.

She was an elected member of the National Executive Committee of the African National Congress (ANC) between 2002 and 2022 and is a former president of the ANC Women's League.

On 6 May 2002, President Mbeki announced that Mapisa-Nqakula would succeed her husband as Deputy Minister of Home Affairs in a cabinet reshuffle occasioned by the death of Steve Tshwete.

She deputised Minister Mangosuthu Buthelezi of the opposition Inkatha Freedom Party, and she was viewed as a likely candidate to succeed him as minister if his party withdrew from the government.

Concurrently, she was the president of the ANC Women's League from August 2003 to July 2008.

She was a cabinet minister from 2004 to 2021, including as Minister of Defence and Military Veterans between June 2012 and August 2021.

She served as deputy minister until the April 2004 general election, after which she joined Mbeki's cabinet as minister in the same portfolio.

Indeed, after the 2004 general election, Mbeki appointed her as Minister of Home Affairs in his second-term cabinet, with Malusi Gigaba serving as her deputy.

Shortly after becoming minister, in September 2004, Mapisa-Nqakula appeared before the South African Human Rights Commission during hearings on xenophobia in South Africa; she acknowledged administrative problems in the asylum system and treatment of refugees, but said that she had set up an anti-xenophobia unit and was working to address other challenges.

Her ministry introduced the Civil Unions Act of 2006, which legalised same-sex marriage.

However, the Department of Home Affairs was a notoriously troubled portfolio.

In January 2008, Patrick Chauke, the chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Home Affairs, complained about the lack of improvement in the department's management, despite various interventions by Mapisa-Nqakula, including the recruitment of a team of turnaround experts; Chauke said, "For the past few years there had been this chaos we had to deal with in the department. We are sick and tired of having to deal with the same problems time and again."

Later the same year, Chauke's committee drafted a report for the Speaker of the National Assembly, Baleka Mbete, requesting Mbete or Mapisa-Nqakula to intervene in the extremely tense relationship between Chauke and Mavuso Msimang, who was appointed as Mapisa-Nqakula's director-general in 2008.

Mapisa-Nqakula's deputy, Gigaba, reportedly backed Chauke in this conflict; unlike Mapisa-Nqakula and Msimang, both were political supporters of Jacob Zuma, Mbeki's principal political rival.

Under Mapisa-Nqakula, the home affairs portfolio confronted a major increase in immigration to South Africa from neighbouring countries, especially due to ongoing political and economic crisis in Zimbabwe.

After the April 2009 general election, President Jacob Zuma moved her to a new portfolio as Minister of Correctional Services, where she served until she was appointed as Minister of Defence and Military Veterans in June 2012.

She was retained in the latter position by Zuma's successor, President Cyril Ramaphosa, and remained in the ministry for almost nine years.

During that period, in September 2020, Mapisa-Nqakula was reprimanded by the president for using a South African Air Force jet to transport an ANC delegation to a party-political meeting in Harare.

She was sacked from Ramaphosa's cabinet on 5 August 2021 in the aftermath of severe civil unrest, and she was elected as speaker on 19 August 2021.