Jean Kapata

Kapata worked as a theatre nurse before being elected to represent the Mandevu constituency at the 2006 election for the Patriotic Front. She was re-elected in 2011 and 2016.^[2][3]

Kapata served as Deputy Minister of Community Development, Mother & Child Health. On 2 October 2009, she was arrested with nine other Patriotic Front MPs after they protested the acquittal of former president Frederick Chiluba with car honks and whistles. They were released on 7 October.^[4]

In 2014, Kapata was appointed by President Michael Sata as Minister for Tourism and Arts.^[5] Under her tenure, the ban on big-game hunting cats in Zambia was lifted.^[6][7] In response to the international media attention surrounding the killing of Cecil the lion in neighbouring Zimbabwe, Kapata said, "the West seemed more concerned with the welfare of a lion in Zimbabwe than of Africans themselves."^[8][9]

Kapata was a member of the Zambia delegation to the United Nations 60th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women in March 2016.^[10] In the lead up to the August 2016 election Kapata received death threats and her driver was attacked by armed men demanding to know where she was.^[11] The MMD candidate for her constituency, Mary Phiri, accused Kapata of sending people to attack her campaign team.^[12] On 27 September 2016, she became Minister for Lands, Natural Resources and Environmental Protection.^[13] She was also the Patriotic Front's Chairperson for Elections.^[14][15]

Kapata is married and is a mother and grandmother.^[12] In 2013, First Lady Christine Kaseba officiated the wedding of Kapata's daughter.^[16]