Communications minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri (71) died last night, reportedly of natural causes, after having been admitted to the Kloof Medi-Clinic Hospital, in Pretoria, some weeks ago.
Deputy communications minister Roy Padayachie says: “This has come as a terrible shock to us all. Her cheerfulness will be missed and we regret that she didn't get the rest she deserved. She dedicated her life to public service.”
Matsepe-Casaburri was admitted to hospital several weeks ago and Manto Tshabala-Msimang, minister of the presidency, was appointed to act in her place. Government protocol is that another full Cabinet minister is appointed to act on behalf of another who may be ill.
Matsepe-Casaburri was appointed as communications minister after the 1999 general elections. Before that, she made history as the first female premier of a province when she was appointed to head the Free State provincial government from 1996 to 1999. In 1993, she was appointed the first female chairperson of the South African Broadcasting Corporation board and led the organisation through its initial transformation.
On a number of occasions, Matsepe-Casaburri filled in for former president Thabo Mbeki as acting president. She was part of a group of Cabinet ministers selected to do so when he and his deputy were either out of the country, or indisposed at the same time. She acted as president when Mbeki resigned and before the inauguration of president Kgalema Motlanthe, in September last year.
Born in Kroonstad, in the Free State, on 17 September 1937, Matsepe-Casaburri was a long-serving member of the African National Congress and went into exile after working as a teacher in KwaZulu-Natal. She had obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Fort Hare and later a doctorate in sociology from Rutgers University in the US.
She served as a senior lecturer at the United Nations Institute on Namibia, in Zambia, and returned to the country in 1990.
Matsepe-Casaburri is the second minister to die while in office. The first was Stella Sigcau, who was serving as minister of public works when she died due to heart failure on 7 May 2006.
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