The Premier

Mr Chupu Stanley Mathabatha

Personal

• Date of birth:  21 January 1957

Current Positions

• Premier of Limpopo Province since 18 July 2013.

Academic Qualifications

• He has a BA Degree from the University of the Western Cape and a Masters Degree in Development (MDev) from the Graduate School of Leadership, University of Limpopo.
• He obtained an Executive Management Development Programme at Harvard University (USA) in 2003.

• He joined politics at a tender age and became a member of the ANC liberation army Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) in 1977 at the age of 20 after the Soweto 1976 Uprising and the same year that his revered comrade, Peter Mokaba was detained under the then draconian Terrorism Act.

• Mr Mathabatha, a renowned MK cadre in the Motetema area under violent conditions precipitated mainly by the presence of the local police training academy.

• In the 80’s, Stan Mathabatha rose to become a prominent leader of the then United Democratic Front (UDF) and later Motetema Youth Congress (MOYCO) and Northern Transvaal Youth Congress (NOTYCO).

• He was part of the advanced youth detachment commonly known as the Young Lions of the North, the most revered, admired and feared by all and sundry.

• After the unbanning of political parties in 1990, Mathabatha became one of the key activists to rebuild the structure of the ANC internally and the Treasurer of the Northern Transvaal Region of the ANC in 1992. He has since served the ANC in various capacities in Limpopo.

• Post the 1994 breakthrough, Mathabatha played a pivotal role in the consolidation and transformation of the then Bantustans administrations of Lebowa, Venda and Gazankulu and the Transvaal Provincial Administration (TPA) into the Northern Province Provincial Administration and later Limpopo.
• He is not only a liberation army soldier and political guru, but also a seasoned administrator. He has over time perfected the art of public administration and evolved into a propeller for change in the developmental space and enterprise development in particular.

• Prior to his appointment as Chief Operations Officer of LimDev in March 2003, Stan Mathabatha was the General Manager of the SMME Directorate in the Provincial Department of Finance and Economic Development in Limpopo and has also worked as the technical advisor to the then MEC of Finance and Economic Development in 1994.
• He was appointed the Managing Director of LimDev in 2005 to 2010 and left to become an Ambassador Extraordinary and Pleanipotentiary of the RSA in Ukraine (non-resident Ambassador in Armenia, Georgia, Moldova) in 2012.