By Dale Hes and Christiaan Schultz
Patricia de Lille was appointed South Africa’s new Minister of Tourism on March 6, moving from her previous position as Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure. De Lille replaces outgoing minister Lindiwe Sisulu, with the move largely welcomed by the tourism sector.
De Lille was born in 1951 in Beaufort West in the Western Cape. While working as a laboratory technician, she became involved in the South African Chemical Workers Union, where she progressed to being elected as a national executive member in 1983.
In 1988, she was elected National Vice-President of the National Council of Trade Unions, the highest position for a woman in the trade union movement at that time.
A year later, De Lille was elected on to the NEC of the Pan Africanist Movement. She led a delegation in the constitutional negotiations that preceded South Africa's first democratic election in 1994 and, following her election as a Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) MP, she acted as Chairperson of the Parliamentary Committee on Transport from 1994 to 1999.
In 2004, De Lille was voted 22nd in the Top 100 Great South Africans, a list compiled from thousands of public votes. She was particularly recognised for leading the call for an investigation into alleged corruption in South Africa’s purchase of weapons from the UK and other European countries, colloquially known as the Arms Deal.
De Lille founded and led the Independent Democrats (ID), a political party that she formed in 2003. In August 2010, the ID merged with the Democratic Alliance (DA), South Africa's official opposition party.
She served as the Western Cape Provincial Minister of Social Development from 2010 to 2011 before being elected Mayor of Cape Town in 2012. She was re-elected to a second term in the 2016 local government elections, serving until 2018. During this time, she also served as DA provincial leader.
During her tenure as Mayor, De Lille oversaw several crucial tourism initiatives, including the launch of the highly successful Cape Town Air Access project in 2016 and the major redevelopment of the Cape Town Cruise Terminal between 2014 and 2018.
She resigned as Mayor in October 2018, establishing a new political party, GOOD, in December of that year. She was subsequently appointed national Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure.
She has also served on various parliamentary portfolio committees including Health, Minerals and Energy, Trade and Industry, Communications, the Rules Committee and the Code of Ethics.
