Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2007. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Sunday Times (Johannesburg) - August 12, 2007
Mpumelelo Mkhabela
She served without a hint of controversy and played a key role in programmes aimed at reskilling ex-combatants who opted to leave the SANDF.
Before then Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge was an ANC backbencher in the National Assembly, where she served on the Portfolio Committee on Land Affairs and on the Committee on the Improvement of Quality of Life and Status of Women. Prior to her dramatic dismissal this week, she was elected to the Central Committee of the SA Communist Party. She had been SACP regional chairman in Pietermaritzburg.
Born 55 years ago, Madlala-Routledge attended school at Magogo and Fairview schools and Inanda Seminary, a girls' high school in Durban.
She cut her political teeth in anti-apartheid activities in KwaZulu-Natal, where she was a member of the Natal Organisation of Women.
It was when she was the organisation's full-time organiser that she was detained in solitary confinement for her political activities. Madlala-Routledge's political background featured gender activism.
She adopted a down-to-earth approach to politics - sympathising with the sick - and it worked.
But it was her public stand on HIV/Aids that led to her popularity: she took a public HIV test - the first by a senior politician at her level - and spoke openly about how HIV/Aids traumatised her family.
Madlala-Routledge, who is an observer on the ANC National Executive Committee, is married to UCT academic Jeremy Routledge and has two sons, Martin and Simon. She lives in Cape Town.
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