Meet SA’s Youngest Member Of Parliament At 24 – Yusuf Cassim

Yusuf Cassim serves as the Democratic Alliances Shadow Deputy Minister for Higher Education in the fifth Parliament. His role is to ensure that every South African has the opportunity to gain skills and further their education regardless of financial constraints. 

Mr Cassim formed part of the DA’s Young Leaders class of 2011. He became the SRC President at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in 2012, and the DA Youth Federal Chairperson in 2013.

Yusuf graduated with a qualification in Accounting on the day when the fifth democratically elected parliament was sworn in. He was 24 when he took his sit in the Parliament last year.

Cassim says politics is his “calling”.

“It (the calling to serve in politics) started with student politics. It started with wanting to represent an alternative, an alternative to the type of oppressive governance that was taking place even at a small level at the university.”

Cassim said he “saw a responsibility” to “move and serve and avail” himself wherever was neccesary to serve South Africans.