Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri’s life in struggle and later in government were vastly different. In this, her life was symbolic of the movement she gave her all for. Like her, the ANC ran a laudable campaign for freedom though it has been much less successful in government.
Matsepe-Casaburri was dreadful as minister of communications though she will be remembered as a notable educationist and an important figure in exile. By keeping her in a portfolio for which she was patently ill-suited, former president Thabo Mbeki has ensured that her political obituary is more muted than it might have been if he had played to her strengths.
His insistence that she stay on as communications minister through a digital revolution and an internet boom she was ill-prepared for, says more about Mbeki than it does about the former minister who died this week, aged 71.
Mbeki kept her in office to thumb his nose at her opponents in industry rather than for any good political or practical reasons.
Throughout her years in the portfolio, the Mail & Guardian nearly always failed the minister in its annual Cabinet report card. Our assessments are based on detailed interviews with industry and sector leaders — nearly all of whom believed her to be out of tune with the digital times.
Her determination to stick with government’s failed managed liberalisation policy has cost South Africa dearly, in terms of the price of doing business and the effect on South African consumers. Small operators took the minister’s policies on review recently and won.
Matsepe-Casaburri died after three weeks in a Pretoria hospital. She hadn’t been at work for a long time. No doubt her portfolio took its toll. The SABC, over which she had political authority, is deeply dysfunctional and the minister had not provided any leadership.
She was due to retire after this month’s election.
A teacher by profession, she taught in apartheid South Africa for two years (KwaZulu-Natal) before going into exile in Swaziland where she taught for 10 years.
She lived in exile for 25 years until she returned in 1990 after the ANC was unbanned.
During exile, she spent time in Swaziland, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia and the United States, where she continued her studies. She completed her doctorate in sociology at Rutgers University in New Jersey and went on to teach there.
From 1983 to 1989 she filled the positions of adjunct professor and senior lecturer, after which she left the US to work in Lusaka, Zambia.
Here she worked as the academic registrar of the United Nations Institute for Namibia until 1990, when she returned to South Africa.
During her exile Matsepe-Casaburri remained politically active in the international branches of the ANC.
In New York she filled the position of branch executive in the ANC and the ANC Women’s League, as well as in the ANC Roma and Northmead branches.
In 1988 she was appointed as the president of the Association of African Women for Research and Development, which has its headquarters in Dakar, Senegal.
During her long political career she remained loyal to the ANC and served on its Free State provincial executive committee for economic transformation and media and communications committees. Later she would be made premier of the Free State where her lack of governing skill did not make her tenure a popular one.
She was also a member of the organisation’s national executive committee.
She was the first woman to be appointed to the board of the Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research, the first black person and woman to become chairperson of Sentech, as well as the first woman and black chairperson of the board of the SABC from 1993 to 1997. — Lloyd Gedye and Mmanaledi Mataboge