Susan Comber van der Merwe (née Young; born 29 May 1954) is a South African politician who served as Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs from April 2004 to November 2010.
[3] Van der Merwe matriculated at Collegiate High School in Port Elizabeth in 1971 and, after a year-long American Field Service cultural exchange,[4] completed a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Cape Town in 1976.
[1][3][5] From 1991 to 1993, she participated in the Mont Fleur scenario planning exercise ahead of South Africa's democratic transition,[2][6] and from 1993 to 1995 she was an executive assistant at the Open Society Foundation, where she worked in the community radio section.
She was a backbencher until January 2001, when President Thabo Mbeki announced his first cabinet reshuffle and appointed van der Merwe as his parliamentary counsellor; she succeeded Charles Nqakula, who had been named as Deputy Minister of Home Affairs.
[20] Minister Trevor Manuel, a friend of van der Merwe's since the Mont Fleur exercise, delivered a farewell address in Parliament, describing her work as "characterised by her love for politics and a clear sense of honour".
In February 2016, the NEC deployed van der Merwe and Dipuo Letsatsi-Duba as interim caretakers of the ANC's Western Cape branch after the incumbent provincial chairperson, Marius Fransman, was removed from office.