National Assembly Speaker Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula has indicated her wish to retire from Parliament as an MP after the upcoming 2024 general elections.
“I have no intentions of coming back to Parliament unless the ANC decides otherwise,” said Mapisa-Nqakula in an interview with eNCA on Thursday.
Mapisa-Nqakula, who was appointed as the Speaker in 2021, has been an MP since 1994 and was in the Cabinet.
“I am one of those people who have been in Parliament for 30 years. I may not have been a Speaker (for all that time), but I had the honour to serve in government,” she said.
She noted that she had served under three presidents, Thabo Mbeki, Jacob Zuma and Cyril Ramaphosa.
“I think that it is time for me to hand over the baton to the younger ones. I think they have fresh ideas; they are still vibrant,” she said.
“Some of us now look like part of the furniture of Parliament,” she said.
Mapisa-Nqakula was among the first ANC members to become MPs and served as the chairperson of the joint standing committee on intelligence between 1996 and 2001.
The former ANC Women’s league president served for six months as the ANC chief whip in 2001 before she was appointed as deputy minister of home affairs.
Mapisa-Nqakula became the home affairs minister after the 2004 elections under Mbeki and went on to become the correctional services minister under Zuma in 2009.
She has also served as the minister of defence and military veterans under Zuma and Ramaphosa.
Mapisa-Nqakula swopped positions with now-Defence Minister Thandi Modise to take up her current post when Ramaphosa reshuffled his Cabinet three years ago.
Cape Times