Jessie Yasmin Duarte was born in Coronationville, on Johannesburg’s west rand on the nineteenth of September 1953.
FILE: ANC deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte. Picture: Christa van der Walt/Eyewitness News
JOHANNESBURG – The ANC’s Deputy Secretary General Yasmin “Jessie” Duarte handed on in the early hours of Sunday morning, aged 68.
At the time of her passing Duarte was the appearing secretary normal of the ANC, she had been half of the secretariat since 2012 when she was elected deputy secretary normal at the ANC’s Mangaung convention and re-elected in 2017 at the Nasrec convention.
She took ailing in November 2021 – by no means returning to workplace – however assisted in the operating of the organisation remotely.
Duarte will probably be remembered for her powerful stance on all issues ANC and her troublesome relationship with the media – which noticed her being labelled a bully.
Jessie Yasmin Duarte was born in Coronationville, on Johannesburg’s west rand on 19 September 1953.
She grew up in Westbury and Newclare.
In the late 1970’s she was introduced into the world of mobilising politically – by the iconic Albertina Sisulu – garnering her the label of being one of “Ma Sisulu’s girls”.
She later went on to turn out to be the secretary normal of the Federation of Transvaal girls.
Duarte was half of an underground staff that arrange girls’s buildings throughout the nation a task she suffered for via detention and banning orders.
She’s additionally recognized for taking part in the position of private assistant to liberation giants – Walter Sisulu and Nelson Mandela.
Duarte has usually spoken fondly of her time at Madiba’s aspect – sharing with the SABC – reminiscences of watching him in motion throughout the lead-up to South Africa’s democracy.
“I come back to the Shell house he was the and he said we are going to go to the east rand now because people have been killed. I’ve been in touch with the government of South Africa I’m not getting the satisfaction that I’m looking for that at least the lives of people are being secured, we going out there. And we did and for me, that kind of energy and immediacy, that kind of commitment to people with no thought for himself played itself out over and over again”.
In 1994 she shaped half of the first democratic authorities appointed as Gauteng Safety and Security MEC –a task she left beneath a cloud – to then be appointed ambassador to Mozambique.
Upon her return to South Africa, she did a brief stint as ANC spokesperson and labored in former president Jacob Zuma’s workplace, quitting amidst tensions in the excessive workplace.
While she’s usually been seen as a troublesome chief outdoors of the ANC her testy nature is accepted amongst its ranks with most of her comrades lauding her motherly nature and persistence proven in her private engagements.
Duarte was elected Deputy Secretary General of the ANC in 2012 in Mangaung and bought one other nod from the social gathering’s branches in 2017 at its Nasrec convention.
She will probably be remembered for this historic second in the ANC the place she drew a line in the sand between the organisation and her ally now suspended Secretary General Ace Magashule.
“It seems to me that the impression has to be created that I am completely confused I don’t know what I’m doing so I want to correct that. I’m certainly not confused as far as I’m concerned if you have been charged criminally the ANC has decided that you have 30 days in which to decide whether you are going to step aside or not after which the ANC’s constitution will kick in and a suspension by either provincial secretary or at a national level whoever is deputising for the secretary general would have to execute the suspension, I’m not confused. I’m clear”.
But to most in the media phrases like bully, troublesome, shameful and irritating come to thoughts at the point out of her title.
She’s usually understood to have seen the media as an opponent as captured in a second with a former eNCA journalist.
“And you want to defend freedom of speech you never fought for and you don’t defend freedom of speech because your particular TV station has decided the direction it will go on as it did in 2016, you follow the DA slogan of Vote for Change. So what do you want us to do to bow and scrape every time you walk into a room and call you my Lord. The Lord of the media. You just a journalist”.
She is survived by her youngsters, grandchildren and prolonged household.
#JessieDuarte Mantashe: she was an easy individual if its black its black, what you see is what you get, she talked straight & thats what many of you in the media couldnt settle for, she talked straight, mentioned issues as she noticed them
EWN Reporter (@ewnreporter) July 17, 2022