Brigitte Mabandla

Brigitte Sylvia Mabandla (born 23 November 1948) is a South African politician, lawyer and former anti-apartheid activist who served in the cabinet of South Africa from 2003 to 2009, including as the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development from 2004 to 2008.

Mabandla was born on 23 November 1948 in Durban in the former Natal Province.

After she was excluded from university, she returned to Natal, where she lived in an informal settlement in Lamontville and worked briefly as youth coordinator at the Institute of Race Relations in Durban between 1974 and 1975.

She also remained active in SASO: in September 1974, she was a member of the SASO committee that organised the "Viva FRELIMO" rallies in Durban and Turfloop, and she and her husband were among the activists who was arrested after the rallies.

She was detained for five months and three weeks, during which time she was not permitted to see her five-month-old daughter, her firstborn child.

She was also tortured by police on several occasions during her detention.

Although she did not herself testify before the post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a Security Branch officer applied for amnesty, saying that he had participated in her torture; he died before his application was heard.

Born in Durban, Mabandla entered politics through the South African Students' Organisation at the University of the North before she went into exile with the ANC in 1975.

Mabandla and her husband were released under banning orders in 1975, and, later that year, they left South Africa to go into exile elsewhere in Southern Africa, both to evade police harassment and to join the outlawed African National Congress (ANC).

Mabandla later said that in the ANC, "my life changed. I was exposed to a different kind of education, to politics, political economy, contesting ideologies, and ideologies of the world."

She attended the University of the North at Turfloop but was excluded for her political activities; later, while in exile, she completed an LLB at the University of Zambia in 1979.

Mabandla rose to political prominence at Turfloop as an activist in the South African Students' Organisation (SASO), an anti-apartheid organisation of the Black Consciousness Movement.

After completing her LLB, she became an academic, lecturing english and law at the Botswana Polytechnic from 1981 to 1983 and then lecturing commercial law at the Botswana Institute of Administration and Commerce from 1983 to 1986.

Her research interests included human rights, children's rights, and constitutional law.

After a decade studying and teaching law in Botswana and Zambia, she was a legal adviser to the ANC in Lusaka from 1986 to 1990.

Thereafter she joined the party's delegation to the negotiations to end apartheid, where she took particular interest in the protection of women's and children's rights.

In 1986, she moved to the ANC's headquarters in Lusaka, Zambia, where she became a legal adviser to the party's internal department of legal and constitutional affairs.

In 1990, Mabandla left her legal adviser post to join the ANC's delegation to the negotiations to end apartheid.

During this period, she was also a member's of the party's constitutional committee.

According to Mabandla, she took seriously O. R. Tambo's advice to ensure that women's rights and children's rights were adequately protected in the post-apartheid constitution.

She worked closely with non-governmental organisations and the ANC Women's League in this capacity.

At the same time, she worked on research in related areas at the Community Law Centre of the University of the Western Cape.

She joined the National Assembly in the April 1994 general election and, after a brief period as a backbencher, she was appointed to the Government of National Unity by President Nelson Mandela, who named her as Deputy Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology in 1995.

In South Africa's first post-apartheid elections in May 1994, Mabandla was elected to represent the ANC in the National Assembly, the lower house of the new South African Parliament.

During her first year in the assembly, Mabandla was a member of the Portfolio Committee on Justice, as well as of an ad hoc committee on the legal status of abortion.

She was viewed as a likely candidate for later appointment to the Human Rights Commission.

After serving in the arts and culture portfolio from 1995 to 2003, Mabandla was appointed to the cabinet of President Thabo Mbeki as Minister of Housing from 2003 to 2004.

However, in March 1995, President Nelson Mandela announced that Mabandla would join the Government of National Unity as Deputy Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology.

Her promotion to this position was viewed as surprising, although the Mail & Guardian described her as "one of the more prominent and most highly-regarded women in the African National Congress caucus".

She replaced Winnie Mandela, who, aggrieved by her own departure, said that Mabandla's appointment was "irregular and unconstitutional".

A veteran of the African National Congress (ANC), she was an elected member of party's National Executive Committee between 1997 and 2012.

She was directly elected onto the body for the first time at the party's 50th National Conference in December 1997, ranked 34th by popularity of the 60 members; she was also elected to the influential National Working Committee.

She was retained in the same position under the cabinet of Mandela's successor, President Thabo Mbeki, who took office after the June 1999 general election.

Mabandla reportedly worked well with the minister in her portfolio, Ben Ngubane of the opposition Inkatha Freedom Party.

She later said that her proudest achievements in the office included the successful campaign to have Sarah Baartman's remains repatriated from the Musée de l'Homme to South Africa.

During this period, Mabandla was additionally a member of the National Executive Committee of the ANC.

After the April 2004 general election, Mbeki appointed her as South Africa's first woman Minister of Justice, in which capacity she had a difficult and controversial relationship with the National Prosecuting Authority and its head, Vusi Pikoli.

She was justice minister until September 2008, when she became Minister of Public Enterprises in the cabinet of President Kgalema Motlanthe.

She resigned from legislative politics after the April 2009 general election.

She became the South African Ambassador to Sweden in January 2020.