Tina Joemat-Pettersson's political life was marked by controversy, but also dedication. She seemed to have enjoyed a second wind in her political home, the ANC, when she died aged 59 after a long illness on Monday at her Cape Town home.

Once the energy minister in the Jacob Zuma administration fingered for a nuclear (non)deal with Russia's Rosatom, Tina Joemat-Pettersson -- the ex-Northern Cape education and then agriculture MEC who later became national agriculture minister -- left public office after being fired from Cabinet in the March 2017 reshuffle. At the December 2017 Nasrec ANC national elective conference she was again re-elected to the governing party's National Executive Committee (NEC), which alongside ANC Women's League work and her sons was her focus until she returned after the 2019 elections as ANC MP, subsequently elected as chairperson of Parliament's police committee.

At the December 2022 ANC national elective conference, ANC MP Tina Joemat-Pettersson stepped into the spotlight when she challenged Nomvula Mokonyane from the floor for the first deputy secretary-general position. It was one of those intricate ANC factional jockeyings after Febe Potgieter, who was nominated, had withdrawn.

Mokonyane's anticipated shoo-in didn't quite happen, although ultimately she did win. But in the ANC factional winds, that contest was important for the so-called CR22 campaign of President Cyril Ramaphosa, whom the Northern Cape backed early on. While for Joemat-Pettersson a ministerial post remained elusive, also in the August 2021 and March 2023 Cabinet...