THE COUNTRY MOURNS
He was a political animal
THE words calculative, hardworking and grounded were yesterday used to sum up the political life of the late Public Service and Administration Minister Collins Chabane by his colleagues in the ANC and government.
Limpopo premier Stan Mathabatha recounted to Sowetan the days he spent with Chabane when he was released from Robben Island in 1990 after his arrest in 1984.
Mathabatha said the minister spent two days at his student flat in Cape Town upon his release.
Chabane was sentenced to six years imprisonment on the island after his arrest on charges of terrorism, round about the same time struggle stalwarts Kgalema Motlanthe and Tokyo Sexwale, among others, were also apprehended by the apartheid security forces.
In 2005, Chabane, then Limpopo MEC for economic development, environment and tourism, appointed Mathabatha managing director of the Limpopo Economic Development Agency.
“He was very sharp. That is why we called him the political animal, a good organiser and a commissar in terms of political education.
“A listener, dedicated cadre of the ANC and a staunch loyalist of the movement, that is how I will always remember him,” he added.
Deployed to parliament after 1994, Chabane spent almost 40 years in the ANC, having joined at the age of 17. He went to exile in May 1980.
In 1997 Chabane was appointed MEC in the office of then premier Ngoako Ramatlhodi, who is now the minister of mineral resources.
“I recruited him into the ANC in 1979 at Turfloop along with comrades Peter Mokaba, Pitsi Moloto and many others and sent them to exile.
“Theirs and his level of loyalty, discipline and cadreship never disappointed. Let us honour comrade Chabane by remembering all he was and stood for,” Ramatlhodi said in a statement from London.
In 2009 Chabane joined President Jacob Zuma’s cab- inet as the minister in the presidency for monitoring and evaluation.
Small Business Development Minister Lindiwe Zulu said: “Collins was a very grounded politician, he did not speak for the sake of speaking. He was also calculative from a point of view of what should happen when the organisation is in difficulties.”
Zulu also spoke of how some ANC NEC members would laugh about Chabane’s music career until he released an album.