Chupu Stanley Mathabatha was born on 21 January 1957 and is a South African politician who was the fourth Premier of Limpopo between July 2013 and June 2024.
27 Facts About Stan Mathabatha
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Stan Mathabatha was elected as Premier of Limpopo in July 2013 after the resignation of Cassel Mathale, and he was elected as the Provincial Chairperson of the African National Congress in Limpopo in February 2014.
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Stan Mathabatha was elected to a third four-year term as ANC Provincial Chairperson in June 2022.
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Stan Mathabatha is a member of the Central Committee of the South African Communist Party.
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Stan Mathabatha is from the Sekhukhune region of what is the Limpopo province of South Africa; at the time of Mathabatha's birth, during apartheid, it was part of the Transvaal province.
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Stan Mathabatha has a Bachelor's degree from the University of the Western Cape and a Master's degree in development from the University of Limpopo.
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Stan Mathabatha attended an Executive Management Development Programme at Harvard University in 2003.
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Stan Mathabatha was a member of the Motetema Youth Congress; of the Northern Transvaal Youth Congress; and of an ANC-aligned youth group known as the Young Lions of the North, which included Cassel Mathale and others.
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Stan Mathabatha entered the public administration sector, working in 1994 as the technical advisor to Limpopo's Member of the Executive Council for Finance and Economic Development.
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Stan Mathabatha left Limdev in 2010 to prepare to take up an ambassadorship.
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In July 2013, the ANC asked Cassel Mathale to resign as Premier of Limpopo, and the ANC-controlled Limpopo Provincial Legislature elected Stan Mathabatha to replace him.
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The Business Day said that Stan Mathabatha was seen as "neutral" in the factional battles in the Limpopo ANC, and the provincial branch of the Congress of South African Trade Unions welcomed his appointment.
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The day after he took office, Stan Mathabatha announced a major reshuffle in his Executive Council: he fired eight of Mathale's ten Members of the Executive Council.
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In February 2014, several months after his appointment as Premier, Stan Mathabatha was elected Provincial Chairperson of the ANC in Limpopo.
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Stan Mathabatha was re-elected unopposed in June 2018; Florence Radzilani replaced Ndou as Deputy Provincial Chairperson.
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Stan Mathabatha was a key ally of Ramaphosa's successful campaign for election to the ANC presidency at the ANC's 54th National Conference in 2017, and was among the first ANC leaders publicly to pronounce support for Ramaphosa's re-election to a second term at the 55th National Conference in 2022: in January of that year, he praised Ramaphosa as a "son of the soil" and for having "brought the new dawn into the organisation [the ANC]".
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Stan Mathabatha is a member of the ANC's Tripartite Alliance partner, the South African Communist Party.
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Also in the run-up to the 55th National Conference, Stan Mathabatha emerged as a serious competitor to incumbent ANC National Chairperson, Gwede Mantashe, who sought re-election to the post.
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An anonymous source told the Business Day that Stan Mathabatha had sought re-election to the Provincial Chairperson position partly in order to bolster his campaign to gain a leadership position in the national ANC.
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Penny Penny claimed, among other things, that none of Stan Mathabatha's MECs were Shangaan-speaking.
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In 2020, the Citizen printed, without attribution, the claim that Stan Mathabatha had displayed a regionalist or nepotist bias in appointing five people from his home region, Sekhukhune, to senior management positions in his office.
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Stan Mathabatha left the office at the 2024 general election, having reached the constitutional term limit.
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Stan Mathabatha was succeeded by Phophi Ramathuba on 14 June 2024.
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Stan Mathabatha was elected to a seat in the National Assembly in the 2024 election, and on 30 June President Ramaphosa appointed him as Deputy Minister of Land Reform and Rural Development.
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Stan Mathabatha's wife was the late Margaret Mathabatha, who had three children.
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Stan Mathabatha was born in Pretoria, Gauteng and was formerly a teacher and civil servant.
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In 2018, there was a mild scandal concerning a voice recording which reportedly recorded Stan Mathabatha confessing romantic feelings towards Florence Radzilani, his deputy in the ANC.