Sheila Camerer

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sheila Margaret Camerer is a South African politician and senior Member of Parliament of the main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA).

Although Camerer's father had been a Member of Parliament for the ruling National Party (NP), as a young lawyer in the mid-1970s she worked on the legal defence strategies of anti-apartheid activitists, including that of the Soweto Committee of Ten. The latter included Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, wife of then jailed African National Congress (ANC) leader and future South African President, Nelson Mandela.

Camerer shocked the establishment when she joined the NP herself and in 1982 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.

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 shortly as deputy justice minister after 1994 until De Klerk decided to suspend the party's participation in the Government of National Unity (GNU).

Camerer was seen as opposing the withdrawel of the now remained New National Party (NNP) from the Democratic Alliance (DA) in 2001, but remained an NNP member until 2003 when newly promulgated legislation allowed her to defect to the DA without losing her parliamentary seat.

In November 2006 Camerer voted in favour of legislation permitting homosexual civil unions.