Jessie Duarte dies at 68

Jessie Duarte, who served as particular assistant to former South African President Nelson Mandela after his launch from jail, has died. She was 68.

Duarte’s dying on Sunday was introduced by the South Africa’s ruling social gathering. She had been on medical depart since November present process most cancers therapy.

“It’s with profound disappointment that the African Nationwide Congress has discovered of the passing of our Deputy Secretary Common, Yasmin ‘Jessie’ Duarte,” the ANC stated in a press release.

A number one political activist throughout the apartheid years, Duarte held a number of senior posts within the authorities and the ANC, which took energy beneath Mandela within the nation’s first multiracial elections in 1994. She fell in poor health weeks after municipal elections wherein assist for the ANC fell beneath 50% for the primary time.

Jesse Duarte, deputy secretary-general of the African Nationwide Congress social gathering (ANC), speaks at a information convention throughout the 54th nationwide convention of the African Nationwide Congress social gathering in Johannesburg, South Africa, on Sunday, December 17, 2017. The management convention of South Africa’s ruling African Nationwide Congress social gathering has accepted the credentials of the delegates, opening the way in which for the beginning of voting to decide on the social gathering’s prime officers, in line with 5 folks acquainted with the deliberations.

Born in Johannesburg on September 19, 1953, Duarte labored as a administration accountant, helped set up ladies’s constructions for the ANC within the Seventies and Eighties, and was detained with out trial. She later turned a number one determine within the anti-apartheid United Democratic Entrance. Mandela appointed her as particular assistant when he was free of jail in 1990, a place she held till he turned president.

Duarte went on to function head of security and safety within the provincial cupboard within the central Gauteng area and spent eight years working for the Division of International Affairs, turning into South Africa’s excessive commissioner to Mozambique. After exiting the diplomatic service in 2003, she was appointed the ANC’s spokeswoman after which served as chief operations officer within the Presidency till her resignation in 2010.

When the social gathering elected Jacob Zuma as its chief for a second time period in 2012, Duarte was appointed its deputy secretary common and was thought to be certainly one of his staunchest allies. Whereas Zuma’s nine-year tenure because the nation’s president was tainted by corruption scandals, Duarte retained her ANC put up after Cyril Ramaphosa succeeded him as its chief in late 2017.

Duarte was named the ANC’s performing secretary common in Could 2021, when the incumbent Ace Magashule was suspended pending his trial on corruption expenses.

Learn: Magashule loses bid to reverse ANC suspension

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