26 Facts About Stanley Mathabatha

Chupu Stanley Mathabatha was born on 21 January 1957 and is a South African politician who is currently the Premier of Limpopo.

Stanley Mathabatha was elected to the position in July 2013 after the resignation of Cassel Mathale.

Stanley Mathabatha was previously a public servant in Limpopo province and from 2012 to 2013 completed a brief stint as a diplomat, serving as South African Ambassador to Ukraine under President Jacob Zuma.

Stanley Mathabatha was elected to a third four-year term as ANC Provincial Chairperson in June 2022.

Stanley Mathabatha is a member of the Central Committee of the South African Communist Party.

Stanley 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.

Stanley 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.

Stanley Mathabatha attended an Executive Management Development Programme at Harvard University in 2003.

Stanley 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.

Stanley 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.

Stanley Mathabatha left Limdev in 2010 to prepare to take up an ambassadorship.

In July 2013, the ANC asked Cassel Mathale to resign as Premier of Limpopo, and the ANC-controlled Limpopo Provincial Legislature elected Stanley Mathabatha to replace him.

The Business Day said that Stanley 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.

The day after he took office, Stanley Mathabatha announced a major reshuffle in his Executive Council: he fired eight of Mathale's ten Members of the Executive Council.

Stanley Mathabatha was re-elected Premier after the 2014 and 2019 general elections.

In February 2014, several months after his appointment as Premier, Stanley Mathabatha was elected Provincial Chairperson of the ANC in Limpopo.

Stanley Mathabatha was re-elected unopposed in June 2018; Florence Radzilani replaced Ndou as Deputy Provincial Chairperson.

Stanley 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]".

Stanley Mathabatha is a member of the ANC's Tripartite Alliance partner, the South African Communist Party.

Also in the run-up to the 55th National Conference, Stanley Mathabatha emerged as a serious competitor to incumbent ANC National Chairperson, Gwede Mantashe, who sought re-election to the post.

An anonymous source told the Business Day that Stanley 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.

Penny Penny claimed, among other things, that none of Stanley Mathabatha's MECs were Shangaan-speaking.

In 2020, the Citizen printed, without attribution, the claim that Stanley Mathabatha had displayed a regionalist or nepotist bias in appointing five people from his home region, Sekhukhune, to senior management positions in his office.

Stanley Mathabatha's wife is Margaret Mathabatha, who has three children.

Stanley Mathabatha was born in Pretoria, Gauteng and was formerly a teacher and civil servant.

In 2018, there was a mild scandal concerning a voice recording which reportedly recorded Stanley Mathabatha confessing romantic feelings towards Florence Radzilani, his deputy in the ANC.