Gwen Ngwenya | |
|---|---|
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| Member of the National Assembly | |
| In office 27 February 2018 – 7 May 2019 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Sinethemba Amanda Ngwenya 7 September 1989 Durban, Natal Province South Africa |
| Political party | Democratic Alliance |
| Education | St. Mary's Diocesan School for Girls, Kloof |
| Alma mater | University of Cape Town University of Paris XII |
Gwen Sinethemba Amanda Ngwenya (born 7 September 1989) is a South African politician and public policy specialist. She was the head of policy for the Democratic Alliance (DA) between 2018 and 2023, excepting a hiatus from January to November 2019. During that time she represented the party in the National Assembly of South Africa from February 2018 to May 2019.
Ngwenya rose to prominence in DA student politics at the University of Cape Town. As president of the student representative council in 2011, she led a productive campaign against the university's prevailing policy of race-based affirmative action in admissions. She was later the chief operating officer of the South African Institute of Race Relations, a liberal think tank, between 2016 and 2018. She left the think tank in February 2018 to enter full-time politics as a parliamentarian and head of policy for the DA.
Her first stint as head of policy lasted less than a year before she fell out with the party leadership and resigned in January 2019. She was regarded as a member of the liberal faction that opposed the DA's ideological direction under Mmusi Maimane. In November 2019, weeks after John Steenhuisen replaced Maimane as DA leader, she was reappointed to her former position. She led the party's policy unit through the September 2020 DA policy conference, which adopted a new assemblage of race-blind policies, including a race-blind affirmative action framework to replace black economic empowerment. She left the DA in March 2023 to become Airbnb's head of policy in the Middle East and Africa.