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Manuel de Freitas

South African politician

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionApr 20, 2026
Entity authorityQ108551164 ↗
Source-derived summary

Manny Simão Franca de Freitas is a South African politician, and former Member of Parliament with the Democratic Alliance, was appointed as the Shadow Deputy Minister of Transport from 2009 to 2012, Shadow Minister of Home Affairs from 2012 to 2014 and Shadow Minister of Transport in 2014, a position he held until the end of term in 2019.

After the 2019 Elections, de Freitas was appointed as Shadow Minister of Tourism, a position which he held until 2024.

In 2020, de Freitas testified at the Zondo Commission where he described his experience in the Transport Portfolio Committee and his vast and varied work he had undertaken with PRASA (Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa).

He was born in Lüderitz in South West Africa (now Namibia). He has been a resident of Johannesburg since the age of 7.

He joined the Democratic Party (DP), the predecessor to the Democratic Alliance in 1993. He was much involved in the DP Youth Branch and served as its Federal Chairman for 4 years.

Amongst numerous organisations, de Freitas was on the executive committee of the Lusito School for the Mentally and Physically Disabled and also served on its council for many years. He has also been involved with the United Cerebral Palsy Association. He served on various boards such as the Portuguese Community Radio and the board of editors of the international LIBEL magazine and Youth Encounter Spirit-Southern Africa.

Editorial summary

“Manuel de Freitas” enters the record as south African politician. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Manuel, Freitas and South can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2009, 2012, 2014, 2019—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Manuel, Freitas and South.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Manuel de Freitas” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Manuel, Freitas and South provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q108551164. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2009, 2012, 2014 and 2019.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
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Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Manuel de Freitas”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Manuel de Freitas primary sources, Manuel de Freitas archive and Manuel research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Manuel de Freitas”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Manuel de Freitas” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.