Ramaphosa, SACP hail Joemat-Pettersson for her contribution to the country

Messages of condolences have started to pour in after the death of ANC MP Tina Joemat-Pettersson.

Joemat-Pettersson was the chairperson of the National Assembly’s police portfolio committee at the time of her death on Monday. President Cyril Ramaphosa has expressed sadness at her death and sent his condolences to the Joemat-Pettersson family.

“We will miss the passion and vigour with which Tina Joemat-Pettersson fought for a better South Africa from the rural villages of the Northern Cape to the benches of parliament and international platforms. May her soul rest in peace,” said the presidency.  

The South African Communist Party (SACP), of which she was a member, also remembered Joemat-Pettersson’s contribution to the country during the apartheid Struggle for freedom and the rebuilding of the nation thereafter. 

“We will remember Tina Joemat-Pettersson above all else through her contribution in building the revolutionary movement that led the Struggle to defeat the apartheid regime and achieve our April 1994 democratic breakthrough.

"In memory of her contribution to the just Struggle, the alliance needs to reconfigure itself to move with the times and become stronger at every new moment to resolve the systemic problems of high unemployment, poverty, inequality, crime, gender-based violence and the electricity under-capacity crisis, all as a matter of urgency,” said the party.

Joemat-Pettersson was a minister of energy under Jacob Zuma’s presidency, but first served as MEC for education in the Northern Cape. The current Northern Cape premier, Zamani Saul, sent his tribute during a press conference, stating that under her leadership Northern Cape schools did extremely well in sports.

Joemat-Pettersson also served in the section 194 committee conducting an inquiry into suspended public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane’s fitness to hold office. – SowetanLIVE