Annelizé van Wyk

Van Wyk was born on 24 August 1964{{cite magazine |date=11 June 1999 |title=General Notice: Notice 1319 of 1999 – Electoral Commission: Representatives Elected to the Various Legislatures |url=https://gazettes.africa/archive/za/1999/za-government-gazette-dated-1999-06-11-no-20203.pdf |magazine=Government Gazette of South Africa |location=Pretoria, South Africa |publisher=Government of South Africa |volume=408 |issue=20203 |pages= |access-date=26 March 2021}} in Pretoria in the former Transvaal.{{Cite web |title=Annelizé van Wyk |url=http://www.pa.org.za/person/annelize-van-wyk/ |access-date=2023-04-26 |website=People's Assembly |language=en}} She is Afrikaans.{{Cite news |date=13 February 2004 |title=Mbeki lauds MP for 'dealing with her past' |work=IOL |url=https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/mbeki-lauds-mp-for-dealing-with-her-past-205907 |access-date=26 April 2023}} Her father was a correctional services officer – he personally drove Nelson Mandela from Pretoria to Cape Town for incarceration on Robben Island – and later became a general in the apartheid-era South African Correctional Services.

After completing her undergraduate degree at the University of Potchefstroom, she enlisted in SADF and worked as an officer in the military intelligence division, which at the time was involved in, among other things, enforcing the repression of the anti-apartheid movement. She joined the governing National Party (NP) in 1987 and became a party activist.{{Cite news |date=6 December 2013 |title=Mandela dies with dream in progress |work=IOL |url=https://www.iol.co.za/business-report/economy/mandela-dies-with-dream-in-progress-1617986 |access-date=26 April 2023}} After leaving SADF, she worked at the Human Sciences Research Council.

Reflecting on her activities during apartheid, van Wyk later said:

For me, the end of apartheid wasn't only about freedom and democracy for the majority of South Africans but it was a personal freedom as well. If you live with the feeling of things not being right and that some people are being treated less like human beings than others, it puts a personal burden on yourself.

After South Africa's first post-apartheid elections in 1994, van Wyk represented the NP in the Gauteng Provincial Legislature from 1994 to 1997. She resigned from her seat and from the NP in 1997 in order to become a founding member of the United Democratic Movement (UDM).

In the next general election in 1999, van Wyk was elected to represent the UDM in the National Assembly, the lower house of the national Parliament. On 1 April 2003, during that year's floor-crossing window, she and five other UDM MPs, among them Salam Abram and Cedric Frolick, announced that they would resign from the party and join the governing African National Congress (ANC). Until then it had been rumoured that van Wyk was planning to join the Democratic Alliance (DA), another opposition party;{{Cite web |date=2010-08-27 |title=Civil society our last hope of intelligent life |url=https://mg.co.za/article/2010-08-27-civil-society-our-last-hope-of-intelligent-life/ |access-date=2023-04-26 |website=The Mail & Guardian |language=en-ZA}} she confirmed that the DA had approached her and the others, but said that they believed the UDM had always been closer to the ANC than to the DA.{{Cite web |date=1 April 2003 |title=Six more UDM MPs defect |url=https://www.news24.com/news24/six-more-udm-mps-defect-20030401 |access-date=2023-04-26 |website=News24 |language=en-US}}

File:Sea Point ANC office Annelize van Wyk MP.jpg]]

The following year, during a parliamentary debate about the 2004 State of the Nation address, President Thabo Mbeki singled van Wryk out as an exemplar of a former NP supporter who had the "courage, honesty and personal integrity" to "allow us to speak openly about her past and for herself to wrestle with the demons of her past". She was re-elected to her seat in the general election held weeks later, standing under the ANC's banner,{{cite magazine |date=20 April 2004 |title=General Notice: Notice 717 of 2004 - Electoral Commission – List of Names of Representatives in the National Assembly and the Nine Provincial Legislatures in Respect of the Elections Held on 14 April 2004 |url=https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/201409/262770.pdf |magazine=Government Gazette of South Africa |location=Pretoria, South Africa |publisher=Government of South Africa |volume=466 |issue=2677 |pages=4–95 |access-date=26 March 2021}} but was not initially re-elected to a third term in 2009 general election. Instead, she was sworn in three months after the election, on 5 August 2009, to fill the casual vacancy that arose after Lindiwe Hendricks resigned.{{Cite web |title=Members of the National Assembly |url=http://www.pmg.org.za/node/30336 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140209085913/http://www.pmg.org.za/node/30336 |archive-date=9 February 2014 |access-date=2 March 2023 |website=Parliamentary Monitoring Group}}

During her third term in Parliament, van Wyk sat on the ad hoc committee that processed the highly controversial Secrecy Bill; according to Richard Calland, she was "enthusiastically vigorous" in her defence of the bill. She also sat on the Portfolio Committee on Police, and in 2010 she, with committee chairperson Sindi Chikunga, co-led a parliamentary task team that investigated possible financial mismanagement in state contracts to build police stations.{{Cite web |date=2010-09-10 |title=Rot runs deep in police stations |url=https://mg.co.za/article/2010-09-10-rot-runs-deep-in-police-stations/ |access-date=2023-04-26 |website=The Mail & Guardian |language=en-ZA}} When Chikunga left the committee in mid-2012 to become Deputy Minister of Transport, the ANC appointed van Wyk to serve as acting chairperson.{{Cite web |date=2012-06-14 |title=Promotion of MP leaves police committee ‘rudderless’ |url=https://mg.co.za/article/2012-06-14-promotion-of-mp-leaves-police-committee-rudderless/ |access-date=2023-04-26 |website=The Mail & Guardian |language=en-ZA}} She was formally nominated for election as chairperson in June 2013.{{Cite web |date=20 June 2013 |title=Sizani replaces Motshekga as ANC Chief Whip |url=https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2013-06-20-sizani-replaces-motshekga-as-anc-chief-whip-/ |access-date=2023-04-26 |website=Sowetan |language=en-ZA}}

In the 2014 general election, van Wyk was ranked 200th on the ANC's national party list and was not re-elected.

{{Reflist}}

• {{People's Assembly (South Africa)|annelize-van-wyk|Ms Annelizé van Wyk}}
• [https://www.timeslive.co.za/amp/sunday-times/lifestyle/2012-10-28-so-many-questions-annelize-van-wyk-/ 2012 interview] at the Sunday Times
• [https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-10-24-i-was-furious-former-police-committee-chair-reacts-to-ipid-cover-up/ "'I was furious' – former Police Committee chair reacts to IPID cover-up"] at the Daily Maverick

{{DEFAULTSORT:van Wyk, Annelizé}}

Category:Living people

Category:Members of the National Assembly of South Africa 1999–2004

Category:Members of the National Assembly of South Africa 2004–2009

Category:Women members of the National Assembly of South Africa

Category:Members of the Gauteng Provincial Legislature

Category:20th-century South African women politicians

Category:21st-century South African women politicians

Category:Military personnel from Gauteng

Category:United Democratic Movement (South Africa) politicians

Category:National Party (South Africa) politicians

Category:1964 births

Category:Politicians from Pretoria

Category:Afrikaner people