President Cyril Ramaphosa is expected to deliver the eulogy at the memorial service in honour of the late founding Speaker of democratic Parliament, Dr Frene Ginwala, in Johannesburg on Tuesday.
Dr Ginwala passed away at her at home in Cape Town on January 12, 2023, at the age of 90, following a stroke two weeks earlier.
The memorial service will serve as a national tribute to the late Speaker.
Champion for gender equality and women’s rights, Dr Ginwala, who always dressed in her traditional sari, was laid to rest in a private ceremony earlier this month.
Born on April 25, 1932, Frene Noshir Ginwala served the anti-apartheid Struggle and South Africa’s democratic dispensation in a diversity of roles as a lawyer, academic, political leader, activist and journalist.
In 2005, she was honoured with the Order of Luthuli in Silver for her excellent contribution to the struggle against gender oppression and her tireless contribution to the struggle for a non-sexist, non-racial, just and democratic South Africa.
The Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution (Casac) released a statement soon after her death was announced, saying Ginwala was an ANC stalwart, a great constitutionalist and champion for gender equality.
She was a founding honorary member of Casac’s advisory council and provided sage advice and encouragement at the time of the council’s establishment in 2010.
Casac executive secretary Lawson Naidoo said Ginwala was a “fiercely independent-minded woman, who would never sacrifice her principles on the alter of political expediency”.
Naidoo worked with Ginwala in exile before 1994. After their return to South Africa, he was her political adviser during the first Parliament of the democratic era.
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