Raenette Taljaard (born 4 July 1972), also known as Raenette Gottardo, is a South African academic and former politician. She represented the Democratic Party (DP) and Democratic Alliance (DA) in the National Assembly from June 1999 until her resignation at the end of 2004. She later served stints as director of the Helen Suzman Foundation and as a member of the Electoral Commission of South Africa.
Under party leader Tony Leon, Taljaard was Shadow Minister of Public Enterprises and later Shadow Minister for Finance. She was best known for her tenure in the Standing Committee of Public Accounts from 2001 to 2002, where she was a leading critic of the Arms Deal. Though Taljaard was widely viewed as among the DA's most promising politicians, Leon had to intervene to secure her place on the party list in the 2004 general election. Her relationship with Leon and other senior DA leaders deteriorated thereafter, and in November 2004 she announced her resignation from the party, from Parliament, and from frontline politics.
In subsequent years, Taljaard lectured in politics at the University of Cape Town and University of the Witwatersrand. She was director of the Helen Suzman Foundation from 2006 to 2009 and served half a term at the Electoral Commission from 2011 until 2015, when she resigned to concentrate on her academic career.
Early life and career
Taljaard was born on 4 July 1972. She was raised in an Afrikaans-speaking home on the West Rand in the former Transvaal and attended an Afrikaans-medium school, Vorentoe High School, in Auckland Park. She went on attend Rand Afrikaans University, where she completed a bachelor's in law, an honours in political science, and a master's in political science, and later the London School of Economics, where she completed a master's in public administration and public policy.
While in London, Taljaard met with Tony Leon and Colin Eglin of the Democratic Party (DP). After graduating she joined the party as a researcher and in 1999 became a speechwriter for Leon, who was party leader, during the DP's campaign ahead of that year's general election.
Parliament
Leon persuaded Taljaard to stand for election to Parliament, and in the 1999 election she was elected to a DP seat in the National Assembly, serving the Gauteng constituency. She was the youngest woman ever elected to Parliament, and over the next few years she was frequently referred to as a "rising star" in the opposition.
In August 2000, when the Democratic Alliance (DA) was established as an opposition coalition between the DP and New National Party, Leon appointed Taljaard as shadow minister for public enterprises. In this capacity, she served as the DP's spokesperson on and ranking member of the Portfolio Committee on Public Enterprises. Despite holding this senior post in the DA, Taljaard had opposed the formation of the coalition, which was generally viewed as a step to the right of the DP. In 2002, Taljaard was disciplined and forced to apologise to her party after she deviated from the DA's position on floor-crossing legislation: the law would allow DP members formally to join the DA, thus establishing the DA as an official parliamentary party, but Taljaard boycotted the vote on the law. During the 2003 floor-crossing window, when the DP expected its representatives to cross to the DA, Taljaard was viewed as a possible hold-out.
Arms Deal: 2001–2002
Taljaard gained much of her national public profile as a leading critic of the 1999 Arms Deal, a massive defence procurement package that was marred by allegations of corruption by politicians of the governing party, the African National Congress (ANC). Her engagement with the Arms Deal began in the Portfolio Committee on Public Enterprises, which investigated the industrial offsets that were attached to the deal. In January 2001, the DA appointed her to a seat in the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA), where she became the party's main spokesperson on the Arms Deal and related investigations. Soon after joining the committee, in February 2001, Taljaard led the DA in a walkout from a committee meeting in protest of what she called "the strong-arm tactics of the executive" in relation to Arms Deal investigations.