CAPE TOWN - The DA’s newest MP is no stranger to political watchers. For the past few years, Amanda Gwen Ngwenya has built up a reputation as a polemicist for her take on South Africa's heated debates, from the controversial Penny Sparrow incident to the role of the Fallist movement at universities.
Ngwenya, 28, who grew up in Durban and completed her formal schooling in the city, was previously the SRC president at the University of Cape Town in 2011.
Ngwenya, which means crocodile in Zulu, says she became politically involved at UCT, although she admits she had always been interested in politics and current affairs, holding “quite strong opinions”.
“I think the climate at university campuses has changed quite significantly. Even though I did get abuse while I was at UCT, it was interesting because I was also friends with many of the other activists in Sasco and the ANC Youth League.
"We'd go out for drinks together, we'd get into heated debates, but there was that level of civility,” she said.
Ngwenya says the atmosphere at South Africa's university campuses was hostile to ideas.
“When I was at university, people were very open to debate, and that was a constant feature of my interaction with my colleagues who had differing political views.
"It was never a sense that 'you must shut up and listen to me talk’ not just for myself, who is black, but the other white students who were in Daso (DA Student Organisation),” says Ngwenya.
She holds a degree in law from UCT, a Master's in international economics from the University of Paris and is currently studying for her second Master's degree in finance at the University of London.
Her work experience includes stints as an economics researcher in India and working for international financial information services company Bloomberg as an account manager.
DA MP Amanda Gwen Ngwenya.
Until recently, Ngwenya was the chief operating officer for the Institute of Race Relations.
“The reason I chose UCT was that it was the only university in the country at the time that had a Daso SRC president. It was still very, very new,” she says.
And at Parliament, she says the debate on the EFF’s motion on the expropriation of land without compensation did not delve into the critical issues but was used to hurl racist insults at the DA.
Ngwenya says she supports land reform, but she argues that a significant amount of land is state-owned and that land should be used to drive land reform.