Siviwe Gwarube

Siviwe Gwarube (born 14 July 1989) is a South African politician who is currently serving as Minister of Basic Education in the Government of National Unity (GNU) since July 2024. A member of the Democratic Alliance (DA), she has been a deputy federal chairperson of the party since April 2026. She was the Chief Whip of the Official Opposition between August 2022 and June 2024. She joined the National Assembly of South Africa in the May 2019 general election. Quotes My upbringing is a very simple one. I was born KwaMgingi, a small village outside of King Williams Town in the Eastern Cape. I lived there until I was 18 with my maternal grandmother who raised me and is still alive today. I come from a household situation that is quite common in South Africa, where the parents have a child at a young age and they leave you to be raised by grandparents. I also had the experience that many young black South Africans have, where I resided in the village, and went to school away from where they lived. School was a whole different reality from where I was coming from and I would commute every day to school. Therefore, there was a duality in the way I lived. Which is not unique as it’s product of where we come from as a country, where people want to send their children away to have a better life and a future. But I had a very simple, very typical village life in hindsight. My greatest influence is my grandmother, a woman who was born before her time as she decided not to get married, she wanted to self-actualise and have a life of her own. She didn’t feel as though she needed a husband to get the most out of life, which was atypical at the time. This didn’t put her in good standing with her family, her father didn’t understand. When she fell pregnant, she went against the grain and she didn’t feel compelled to marry the baby’s father. She also owned a few businesses and was a teacher for a few years and in her late 50s she went back to school to obtain a BA in Linguistics. External links Category:Living people