Born in Natal Province, Landers represented the Labour Party in the apartheid-era Tricameral Parliament. He also served as a deputy minister in the government of President P. W. Botha. In September 1993, he defected to the ANC, and he was elected to an ANC seat in the post-apartheid Parliament in 1994.
In 2002, Landers replaced Sister Bernard Ncube as the chairman of the Joint Committee on Ethics and Members' Interests. He led the committee during its inquiries into the conduct of Terror Lekota and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.[6][7] In late 2003 Richard Calland noted critically that under Landers the committee's "new default position" was to meet in closed session; he suggested that Landers's approach might have been negatively influenced by his time in the secretive intelligence committee.[8] He continued to serve in the chair during the Third Parliament, nominated to continue by the ANC after the 2004 general election and formally re-elected as chairman at a meeting in June 2004.[9][10] During this time he was also a member of the ANC's internal National Disciplinary Committee, and he was a member of the panel that expelled chief whip Mbulelo Goniwe from the party in December 2006.[11]
After the 2009 general election, Landers was elected to his third term as chairman of the parliamentary ethics committee. In terms of new parliamentary rules, he served alongside a new co-chairman from the upper house of Parliament, the National Council of Provinces; Buoang Mashile was elected to that role at the committee's first meeting in August 2009.[12]
Justice committee
In November 2010, the ANC announced a major reshuffle of the parliamentary caucus, in which Landers was nominated to succeed Ngoako Ramatlhodi as chairman of the justice committee, by then renamed the Portfolio Committee on Justice and Constitutional Development.[13] He had remained an ordinary member of that committee since its establishment.[2]
Landers led the justice committee for the rest of the Fourth Parliament. During that time, he was also a prominent member of the ad hoc committee established to process the Protection of State Information Bill, 2010, the controversial piece of legislation best known as the Secrecy Bill. Along with ad hoc committee chairman Cecil Burgess, Landers was viewed as a primary advocate of the bill, tasked by the ANC with presenting the party's arguments for the bill in committee.[14][15][16] After the Secrecy Bill was passed, Landers was one of seven ANC representatives nominated to serve on the ad hoc committee that would consider the Public Protector's report on Nkandlagate.[16][17] He was also a member of the ad hoc committee on the judicial conduct code, and he was attached to the ANC's constituency office in Pinetown South, KwaZulu-Natal.[18]
Deputy Minister of International Relations and Cooperation: 2014–2019
Landers (right) meeting with Salvador Sánchez Cerén, President of El Salvador, 31 March 2017
