[1] She joined the ANC underground in 1965, while the party was still banned by the apartheid government, and in the 1980s was active in the Federation of South African Women and in civic organisations in Soweto.
[2][3] Morutoa was sworn into an ANC seat in the National Assembly on 1 November 2001, filling the casual vacancy created when Duma Nkosi left to become Mayor of Ekurhuleni.
From 2004 to 2009, she succeeded Lulu Xingwana as chair of Parliament's Joint Monitoring Committee on the Improvement of the Quality of Life and Status of Women (JMC).
[8][3] Under her leadership, the caucus made the legal status of sex work a priority issue.
[10] When the South African Law Reform Commission published a report which recommended against full decriminalisation, the women's caucus under Morutoa held a summit on sex workers at which stakeholders were invited to make submissions on the report and broader policy.