Sheila Camerer

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

Sheila Margaret Camerer
South Africa Ambassador to Bulgaria
In office
2009 - 2013
Member of Parliament
In office
2004–2009
Member of Parliament
In office
1994–2003
Member of Parliament
In office
1987–1994
ConstituencyRosettenville
Personal details
Born (1941-12-15) 15 December 1941
Cape Town, South Africa
Political party
Spouse(s)Alexander Camerer
Children1 son, 2 daughters
ResidenceCape Town, South Africa

Career

Camerer is the daughter of Bob Badenhorst Durrant and his wife, Diana. Durrant himself was a one-time UP MP for Turffontein.[1]

Camerer graduated from the University of Cape Town where she was Rag Queen.[1]

Like her father, Camerer had political instincts and she joined the National Party, in 1982 she 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. In 1989 when Camerer was a National Party member of Parliament, she said:

People are influenced by manners more than appearances. I like to believe I transfix voters with my big blue eyes.[2]

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 briefly as deputy justice minister after 1994 until De Klerk decided to suspend the party's participation in the Government of National Unity (GNU). In 1997, she became leader of the now rebranded New National Party (NNP) (which was part of the Democratic Alliance (DA)) in the National Assembly, the first-ever woman and English-speaker in the history of the NP or its successor, the NNP, to hold that post.

The New National Party withdrew from the DA in 2001, Camera remained an NNP member until 2003 when newly promulgated legislation allowed her to defect to the DA without losing her parliamentary seat.

After the 2009 South African general election Camerer was appointed as Ambassador to Bulgaria.[3] In March 2013 Camerer completed her term as ambassador and is currently retired.

gollark: Surprisingly, yes.
gollark: COBOL is like Java, but not actually similarly designed and significantly worse.
gollark: *Why* are you *learning* COBOL?
gollark: *Somehow* VS Code has a plugin.
gollark: On the plus side, the interpreter I eventually made after the challenge is cool™ and iterative™ (no call stack limit) and does IO right™.

References
  1. Canvassing with a Nat out of Tatler and an assertive DP yuppie Sunday Times. 23 July 1989
  2. Waal, Shaun de (26 April 2014). "[From our archives] 20 bizarre apartheid moments". The M&G Online. Retrieved 2016-04-27.
  3. "PRESENTATION OF CREDENTIALS" (PDF) (Press release). Retrieved 2015-12-30.
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