Sheila Camerer

Last updated

Sheila Margaret Camerer
South Africa Ambassador to Bulgaria
In office
2009 - 2013
SpouseAlexander Camerer
Children1 son, 2 daughters
Residence(s)Cape Town, South Africa

Sheila Margaret Camerer (born 15 December 1941) is a retired South African politician and was a Member of Parliament of the main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance(DA).

Contents

Career

Camerer is the daughter of Bob Badenhorst Durrant and his wife, Diana. Durrant himself was a one-time UP MP for Turffontein. [1]

Camerer graduated from the University of Cape Town where she was Rag Queen. [1]

Like her father, Camerer had political instincts and she joined the National Party, in 1982 she was elected NP member of the Johannesburg City Council. In 1987 she was elected Member of Parliament for the Johannesburg constituency of Rosettenville and two years later appointed deputy justice minister in the government of reformist NP leader and South African president FW de Klerk. In 1989 when Camerer was a National Party member of Parliament, she said:

People are influenced by manners more than appearances. I like to believe I transfix voters with my big blue eyes. [2]

During the constitutional negotiations on a democratic South Africa, Camerer was employed to lead the NP in drafting a Bill of Rights. Later she became a prominent spokesperson for the party in parliament, and served briefly as deputy justice minister after 1994 until De Klerk decided to suspend the party's participation in the Government of National Unity (GNU). In 1997, she became leader of the now rebranded New National Party (NNP) (which was part of the Democratic Alliance (DA)) in the National Assembly, the first-ever woman and English-speaker in the history of the NP or its successor, the NNP, to hold that post.[ citation needed ]

The New National Party withdrew from the DA in 2001, Camera remained an NNP member until 2003 when newly promulgated legislation allowed her to defect to the DA without losing her parliamentary seat.

After the 2009 South African general election Camerer was appointed as Ambassador to Bulgaria. [3] In March 2013 Camerer completed her term as ambassador and is currently retired.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New National Party (South Africa)</span> 1997–2005 political party in South Africa

The New National Party (NNP) was a South African political party formed in 1997 as the successor to the National Party, which ruled the country from 1948 to 1994. The name change was an attempt to distance itself from its apartheid past, and reinvent itself as a moderate, mainstream conservative and non-racist federal party. The attempt was largely unsuccessful, and in 2005 the New National Party voted to disband itself.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Democratic Party (South Africa)</span> Political party in South Africa

The Democratic Party (DP) was the name of the South African political party now called the Democratic Alliance. Although the Democratic Party name dates from 1989, the party existed under other labels throughout the apartheid years, when it was the Parliamentary opposition to the ruling National Party's policies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Assembly of South Africa</span> Lower house of the Parliament of South Africa

The National Assembly is the directly elected house of the Parliament of South Africa, located in Cape Town, Western Cape. It consists of four hundred members who are elected every five years using a party-list proportional representation system where half of the members are elected proportionally from nine provincial lists and the remaining half from national lists so as to restore proportionality.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roelf Meyer</span> South African politician and businessman

Roelof Petrus MeyerGCOB is a South African politician and businessman. A Member of Parliament between 1979 and 1997, he was the chief negotiator for the National Party government during the negotiations to end apartheid. He later co-founded the United Democratic Movement.

Although the Democratic Alliance of South Africa in its present form is fairly new, its roots can be traced far back in South African political history, through a complex sequence of splits and mergers.

Jacobus Tertius Delport was a South African academic, lawyer, and politician.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anchen Dreyer</span> South African politician

Anchen Margaretha Dreyer is a South African politician, a Member of Parliament for the opposition Democratic Alliance, and former Chairperson of the Democratic Alliance Caucus in the National Assembly. Before being elected unopposed to this position on 26 May 2014, she was first the Shadow Minister of Public Enterprises and thereafter the Shadow Minister of Public Works.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michéle Clarke</span> South African politician

Michéle Odette Clarke is a South African politician. A member of the Democratic Alliance, Clarke served as a councillor in the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality from 2004 until her election to the Gauteng Provincial Legislature as a DA representative in 2014. After serving one term in the provincial legislature, Clarke was elected to the National Assembly of South Africa in 2019. She currently serves as Shadow Minister of Health after previously serving as Shadow Deputy Minister of Public Service and Administration and as Shadow Deputy Minister of Public Enterprises.

Douglas Harvey Monro Gibson is a South African retired attorney, politician and diplomat who served as South Africa's ambassador to Thailand between 2008 and 2012. Previously, he had served as chief whip of the opposition from 1999 to 2007, as chairperson of the federal council of the Democratic Party between 1997 and 2000, and as a Member of the National Assembly of South Africa between 1994 and 2008.

Adriaan Hermanus "Maans" Nel is a South African politician who served in the National Assembly from 1994 to 2009, representing the Northern Cape. He was a member of the National Party (NP) and New National Party (NNP) until March 2003, when he crossed the floor to the Democratic Alliance (DA).

Barend Leendert "Boy" Geldenhuys is a retired South African politician and diplomat who represented the National Party (NP) and New National Party (NNP) in the National Assembly from 1994 to 2004. He served as the leader of the NNP caucus from 2002 to 2004. After losing his seat in the 2004 general election, he was appointed as South African Ambassador to Jordan. A former minister in the Dutch Reformed Church, Geldenhuys also represented the NP in the apartheid-era House of Assembly.

Renier Stephanus Schoeman is a South African politician, businessman and former civil servant who represented the National Party (NP) and New National Party (NNP) in Parliament from 1985 to 2004. He was the provincial leader of the NNP in KwaZulu-Natal from 1999 until the party's demise.

Daryl Wade Swanepoel is a South African politician and political strategist who is currently the chief executive officer of the Inclusive Society Institute. He was formerly the co-convenor of the Progressive Business Forum, a fund-raising vehicle of the African National Congress (ANC). He also represented the ANC in the National Assembly from 2013 to 2014.

Pierre Jacques Rabie is a retired South African politician and former academic from the Western Cape. He served in the National Assembly for three terms from 1999 to 2014, representing the Western Cape constituency. He was a member of the New National Party (NNP) until the March 2003 floor-crossing window, when he joined the Democratic Alliance (DA).

Izak Jacobus "Sakkie" Pretorius is a retired South African politician from the Western Cape. He served in the National Assembly from 1994 to 2004, representing the Western Cape constituency. He was later elected as a local councillor in the City of Cape Town.

Martha Elisabet Olckers is a retired South African politician who was the Western Cape's inaugural Member of the Executive Council (MEC) for Education from 1994 to 1998. After her term in the Western Cape Provincial Parliament ended in 1999, she represented the New National Party (NNP) in the National Assembly from 1999 to 2004. She is also a former deputy leader of the NNP's Western Cape branch.

Daniel Pieter Antonie "Danie" Schutte is a South African politician and lawyer who was the last Minister of Home Affairs of the apartheid era from 1993 to 1994. He represented the National Party (NP) both in the apartheid-era House of Assembly and in the post-apartheid National Assembly.

Petrus Arnoldus "Piet" Matthee is a South African politician who represented the National Party (NP) and New National Party (NNP) in Parliament from 1987 to 2004, excepting a hiatus in the President's Council from 1989 to 1990. He joined Parliament during apartheid as the MP for Umlazi, KwaZulu-Natal. In the post-apartheid era, he served in the National Assembly from 1994 to 1999 and then as leader of the NNP in the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) from 1999 to 2004.

Pieter Willem Saaiman was a South African politician from the Northern Cape who served as Deputy Minister of Correctional Services from 2003 to 2004. Between 1989 and 2009, he held a variety of positions in the national and provincial governments, representing a series of parties.

Gert Benjamin Myburgh was a South African lawyer and politician from the Eastern Cape. He served as Deputy Minister of Justice from January 1995 until his death in March 1996. He had formerly served as Deputy Minister of Law and Order from 1992 to 1994 and was a long-serving representative of the National Party (NP) in Parliament.

References

  1. 1 2 Canvassing with a Nat out of Tatler and an assertive DP yuppie Sunday Times. 23 July 1989
  2. ↑ Waal, Shaun de (26 April 2014). "[From our archives] 20 bizarre apartheid moments". The M&G Online. Retrieved 27 April 2016.
  3. ↑ "PRESENTATION OF CREDENTIALS" (PDF) (Press release). Retrieved 30 December 2015.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.