PASSING ANCWL DEPUTY PRESIDENT COMRADE LUNGI MNGANGA-GCABASHE @KASIBCNEWS

PASSING ANCWL DEPUTY PRESIDENT COMRADE LUNGI MNGANGA-GCABASHE @KASIBCNEWS

The ANC Women's League is disheartened with the passing of our Deputy President, Cde Lungi Mnganga-Gcabashe after a short illness. Cde Lungi Gcabashe was a seasoned cadre who served our movement with resilience and dedication during the darkest days under the banner of the defiant United Democratic Front (UDF). 

Cde Lungi Mnganga-Gcabashewas a frontline battalion during the height of the State of Emergency in the Province of KwaZulu/Natal, in confrontation with the mighty Apartheid Security Forces, when the masses of our people declared "Freedom or Death". She cut her teeth in the National Women’s Organisation (NAWU), an affiliate of the UDF that carried the responsibility to champion the emancipation of women from an inherently patriarchal Apartheid State. 

At the dawn of our political dispensation, Cde Lungi was deployed to build structures of the movement in the Province of her birth, where she excelled in mobilising the motive forces under difficult political circumstances in KwaZulu-Natal. Cde Lungi Gcabashe served on the first Southern Natal Regional Executive Committee (REC) of the African National Congress Women’s League (ANCWL), and was elected to the first ANC Provincial Executive Committee (PEC) and its Provincial Working Committee (PWC) which was an amalgamation of three (3) regions of the former Natal Province, namely Southern, Northern and Midlands. She also served as the first ANCWL PEC of the Natal Province where she was designated a responsibility of being the Provincial Deputy Secretary. 

The demarcation of the Province of KwaZulu/Natal into eleven (11) regions saw Cde Lungi elected to become the first Regional Chairperson of the Ethekwini Region for two (2) consecutive terms. 

Cde Lungi Mnganga-Gcabashe then went on to be elected as a Provincial Deputy Chairperson of the ANC Women’s League in KwaZulu/Natal and subsequently becoming the second Provincial Chairperson since the unbanning of the ANC. In May 2012 Cde Lungi Gcabashe was elected to the ANC Provincial Executive Committee (PEC) and in the same year she was elevated to the ANC National Executive Committee (NEC) 

This gentle giant was been deployed by the African National Congress to represent the people of KwaZulu/Natal in the provincial legislature where she stood her ground in defence of the pro-poor policies of our movement. 

Cde Lungi Mnganga-Gcabashe took a brief sabbatical from the chambers of our legislatures and unearthed her prowess as a public policy administrator where she worked in various capacities as a civil servant.  

The ANC Women’s League through its branches deployed this solid revolutionary once again in July 2023 to serve a full five (5) year term as a Deputy President, immediately after our mother body, the ANC elected her to serve on the highest decision-making body in the 2022 ANC Conference. After the 2024 National General Elections, Cde Lungi was deployed to the Lower House of Parliament by her movement the ANC, to serve the people of South Africa. 

Cde Lungi Mnganga-Gcabashe leaves our movement and this world at the height of her sterling work in the National Assembly as a Member of Parliament serving as the Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Tourism. Cde Lungi Gcabashe was a fearless and an uncompromising human rights activist who expressed her views without any fear of contradiction, and true to her conviction of a non-racial, non-sexist, democratic and prosperous society. 

The ANC Women’s League and the broader Mass Democratic Movement is poorer without this colossal woman who was fearless in combat and her resilience never in depletion. 

We send our deepest condolences to her family, and may her revolutionary soul rest in eternal peace.