Johnathan Paoli
Veteran ANC member and former Minister of Agriculture Thoko Didiza has been elected as Speaker of the 7th administration in the National Assembly with a landslide majority of 284 votes.
Parliament went on a break and took a secret ballot after which Didiza was announced as the Speaker with 284, against the EFF’s Veronica Mente who received 49 votes.
Didiza is one of the longest serving Members of Parliament. In 2019 she was appointed by President Cyril Ramaphosa after the general elections, as Minister despite being considered the frontrunner to succeed Baleka Mbete as Speaker of the National Assembly.
During former President Thabo Mbeki’s tenure in 2006, Didiza was appointed Minister of Public Works to succeed Stella Sigcau who had died while in office.
She was first appointed to the National Assembly in 1994 by President Nelson Mandela to serve in the first post-apartheid government as Deputy Minister of Agriculture.
On Friday at the National Assembly, the ANC nominated Didiza for the role of Speaker, which she accepted while the ATM, leader, Vuyo Zungula nominated Veronica Mente, with UDM leader, Bantu Holomisa seconding the nomination. Mente also accepted her nomination.
Mente, the current EFF chairperson, began her professional career as a bodyguard to the then Mayor of Cape Town. She was a “barefoot lawyer” – an activist in the township of Khayelitsha and assisted workers who have had their rights abused in different ways in the workplace.
She became a member of the EFF shortly after its founding and was elected to Parliament in 2014, and re-elected for a second term as an MP following the 2019 elections.
Mente is a member of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts and an Alternate Member of the Standing Committee on the Auditor General.
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