ANC MP and SACP central committee member Nomvuzo Shabalala has died

• ANC MP SACP central committee member, Nomvuzo Francisca Shabalala, has died.
• Shabalala, 60, died on Saturday after being hospitalised last week.
• She served on the Portfolio Committee on Basic Education. She also served on the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Ethics and Members Interests.

ANC MP and SACP central committee member, Nomvuzo Francisca Shabalala, has died.

Shabalala, 60, died on Saturday after being hospitalised last week.

She served on the Portfolio Committee on Basic Education and on the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Ethics and Members Interests.

Reacting to her death, SACP general secretary Dr Blade Nzimande said: "On behalf of the SACP central committee and the party's entire membership, I wish to express our message of heartfelt condolences to the Shabalala family for the great loss encountered."

Shabalala served as a member of the SACP central committee, the party's highest decision-making body when its national congress, which convenes every five years, is not in session.

She was elected to the committee by the 14th national congress of the SACP in July 2017.

At that time, she was the deputy provincial chairperson of the SACP in KwaZulu-Natal, a position she held from 2015 until 2018.

SACP spokesperson Dr Alex Mashilo said at the time of her death, Shabalala was serving as an ANC MP.

"Her parliamentary work started in 2018. She was re-elected during the May 2019 general election. Before then, she served as a councillor and deputy mayor of the eThekwini metropolitan municipality. The governance of the eThekhwini metropolitan municipality was fairly sound under her leadership and that of James Nxumalo as the mayor under the challenging circumstances that they and the entire council and municipality found themselves faced with.

"The SACP in Moses Mabhida (KZN) province benefitted from Shabalala's leadership as a member of the Provincial Executive Committee of the SAPC from 2012. In the early 2000s, she was the deputy secretary of the ANC Durban South region.

"Her early political activism combined the struggle through trade unionism against exploitation and the struggle against apartheid racial oppression and gender domination. She was an activist of the Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers Union of South Africa (CCAWUSA) which was later renamed the South African Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers Union (SACCAWU) in 1989," Mashilo said.

Shabalala was an activist of the United Democratic Front (UDF) and an distributor of Speak magazine.

"In memory of Shabalala, the SACP reiterates its unqualified support for the strengthening of the progressive women's movement and the intensification of the struggle to end economic exploitation and patriarchy and dismantle racism in our society.

"It is an essential part of this struggle to confront the networks of neoliberalism, its austerity agenda, and state capture and looting of public resources," said Mashilo.