Brigitte Mabandla

South African politician (born 1948)

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. She became the South African Ambassador to Sweden in January 2020. A veteran of the African National Congress (ANC), she was an elected member of party's National Executive Committee between 1997 and 2012. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

Mabandla was born on 23 November 1948 in Durban in the former Natal Province. She attended the University of the North at Turfloop but was excluded for her political activities; 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. 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 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. 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. she was also elected to the influential National Working Committee. In December 2002, she was re elected to the National Executive Committee, ranked 27th, and to the National Working Committee.

In February 2003, in a minor cabinet reshuffle, Mabandla replaced Sankie Mthembi Mahanyele as Minister of Housing. She remained in that office only until the April 2004 general election. The Mail & Guardian said that, during her four years in that office, she "was widely seen as an indecisive underperformer".

Her term was dominated by public controversies arising from law enforcement investigations into prominent political figures, particularly by the Scorpions, a specialised anti corruption unit of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA). When Mbeki appointed the Khampepe Commission to review the structure and mandate of the Scorpions in 2005, Mabandla told commission chair judge Sisi Khampepe that the relationship between the Scorpions and the police had "irretrievably broken down" and that she would support merging the Scorpions into the South African Police Service. Although the commission did not accept her recommendation, journalists suspected, and Mabandla later confirmed, that her testimony to the Khampepe Commission had lasting damage on her relationship with Vusi Pikoli, the head of the NPA. Observers also surmised that Mabandla, as the NPA's political head, felt that Pikoli excluded her from decision making, particularly in high profile cases and particularly by comparison with the close relationship between their respective predecessors, Bulelani Ngcuka and Minister Penuell Maduna. However, there was widespread suspicion that his suspension was related to the fact that, earlier the same week, he had obtained a warrant to arrest one of Mbeki's allies, National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi, on corruption charges; Pikoli himself agreed with this interpretation. During later investigations, Scorpion Gerrie Nel said that Mabandla had met with the Scorpions team in June 2007 and had agreed that there was a strong case but had expressed concern that Selebi's arrest would "shake the foundations of this country". Pikoli, moreover, revealed that Mabandla had written to him on 18 September 2007 with an instruction not to pursue Selebi's prosecution until, in the words of her letter, she was "satisfied that indeed the public interest will be served should you go ahead" and "that sufficient evidence exists". Pikoli's lawyer, Wim Trengove, argued that Mabandla's instruction constituted a clear infringement on the constitutional independence of the NPA.

Amid this controversy, Mabandla attended the ANC's 52nd National Conference, held in December 2007 in Polokwane. Unlike most of Mbeki's other cabinet ministers, she made a strong showing in the National Executive Committee elections and was elected to her third term, now ranked ninth of 80. However, she did not gain re election to the National Working Committee. In addition, she served as the first woman president of the Asian–African Legal Consultative Organisation, gaining election to that office at the organisation's 46th session in Cape Town in 2007.

When Mbeki resigned from the presidency at the ANC's request in September 2008, Mabandla was among the minority of ministers who did not submit their own resignations in response. Mbeki was succeeded by President Kgalema Motlanthe, who, on 25 September, announced that Mabandla would succeed Alec Erwin as the Minister of Public Enterprises in his new cabinet. She was replaced as justice minister by Enver Surty, who oversaw the disbanding of the Scorpions, while her major task in her new portfolio was the management of power utility Eskom amid the ongoing energy crisis in South Africa. She vacated her parliamentary seat and cabinet office after the April 2009 general election.

After leaving frontline politics, Mabandla continued her public service in various capacities: President Jacob Zuma appointed her as chairperson of the National Orders Advisory Council in October 2014, and in January 2015, the 22nd African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) Forum Summit appointed her to succeed Baleka Mbete as a member of the APRM's Panel of Eminent Persons. In January 2016, she was appointed to a 17 person high level panel that was chaired by former President Motlanthe and tasked by Parliament with assessing key legislation and its efficacy. In 2020, she was designated as South African Ambassador to Sweden by President Cyril Ramaphosa. She presented her credentials at the Stockholm Palace on 16 January. She also remained active in the ANC, and in July 2018 she was appointed to deputise George Mashamba as deputy chairperson of the party's internal Integrity Commission.

In 1972, Mabandla married Lindilwe Mabandla, an activist whom she had met in the South African Students' Movement.