Janet Love
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Janet Love | |
|---|---|
| Member of the National Assembly | |
| In office 9 May 1994 – 1 August 1999 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 21 December 1957 |
| Party | African National Congress (formerly) |
| Alma mater | Wits University |
Janet Yetta Love (born 21 December 1957) is a South African civil servant, activist and former politician who has served as vice-chairperson of the Electoral Commission of South Africa since 2018. Before her appointment to the Electoral Commission in 2016, she was a part-time commissioner at the South African Human Rights Commission from 2009 to 2016. She was also director of the Legal Resources Centre from 2006 to 2018.
During apartheid, Love was a member of Umkhonto we Sizwe and worked for the African National Congress (ANC) in exile, ultimately as an officer for Operation Vula. She represented the ANC at the negotiations to end apartheid and subsequently served in an ANC seat in the National Assembly from 1994 to 1999, when she entered the civil service. She was a member of the National Executive Committee of the ANC from 2007 to 2010.
Love was born in Johannesburg[1] on 21 December 1957.[2] Her parents had emigrated to South Africa in 1949: her mother, Dora Rabinowitz, was Jewish and a survivor of Stutthof concentration camp, while her father, Frank Love, had been a British soldier.[1] Love completed a bachelor's degree in political science and industrial sociology from Wits University, as well as postgraduate diplomas from Wits and from the University of London.[3]
While at Wits, she was a member of the student representative council and was active in the anti-apartheid National Union of South African Students and its wages commission.[1] In 1975, she was recruited into the informal underground of the African National Congress (ANC), then banned inside South Africa.[1] She left the country in late 1977, during the repressive state crackdown that followed the Soweto uprising; though only intending to leave for a brief sojourn, she remained in exile for the next decade, joining Umkhonto we Sizwe and working for the overseas missions of the ANC and South African Congress of Trade Unions.[1][3]
In 1987, she was smuggled back into South Africa in order to join the ANC's new and covert Operation Vula.[1] Based in Johannesburg, she was the main communications officer for Vula,[4][3] and after the Security Branch uncovered the operation in 1990, she went into hiding to avoid arrest.[5] At the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Love sought and received amnesty for her involvement in Vula's unlawful possession and distribution of arms.[6] From 1991, she was a member of the ANC's delegation to the negotiations that ended apartheid,[1][3] and she was a member of the management team at the Convention for a Democratic South Africa.[7]
Post-apartheid career
In South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994, Love was elected to represent the ANC in the National Assembly, the lower house of the new South African Parliament.[8] She was a member of the 22-member Constitutional Committee that steered the process of drafting the post-apartheid Constitution,[7] and she also chaired the Portfolio Committee on Agriculture, Water Affairs and Forestry.[9] She was re-elected to a second term in the assembly in the 1999 general election, but she resigned from her seat with effect from 1 August 1999.[10]
She subsequently entered the civil service, serving as special adviser to Ronnie Kasrils at the Ministry of Water Affairs and Forestry; according to the Mail & Guardian, her influence was such that she was referred to in the ministry and department as Kasrils's "deputy minister".[9] She later spent five years as a manager at the South African Reserve Bank, leading strategic analysis in the currency department.[3] In 2006, though not herself a lawyer, she was appointed as national director of the Legal Resources Centre, South Africa's largest public interest law firm, known for its pro bono work.[3][7]
Ahead of the ANC's 52nd National Conference in December 2007, the Congress of South African Trade Unions endorsed Love for election to the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the ANC.[11] She was elected to a five-year term on the NEC; by number of votes received, she was ranked 45th of the 80 candidates elected.[12]