Makhenkesi Stofile: UDF leader and premier who led E Cape to meltdown
1944-2016
ARNOLD Makhenkesi Stofile, who has died in Alice at the age of 71, was a theology lecturer and church minister who became a courageous leader of the ANC underground, champion of nonracial sport, premier, cabinet minister and ambassador.
He was born on December 27 1944 on a farm in Adelaide, in the Eastern Cape, matriculated at Newell High School in Port Elizabeth and worked as a machine operator at a textile factory for three years before going to the University of Fort Hare.
He obtained a BA, BA honours and master’s degree in theology, taught systematic theology and comparative religious philosophies for 14 years at Fort Hare and became a Presbyterian minister in 1975.
He was a rugby player of distinction, playing hooker for the Border provincial team. He became active in administration and used sports associations to build up an ANC underground.
When the United Democratic Front was formed in 1983, he was elected general secretary of the Border region. The task of organising its structures fell largely on his shoulders.
Although the UDF was a legitimate organisation at the time, it was targeted by the security police. Its meetings were disrupted, its leaders monitored, threatened, detained, tortured and killed.
Stofile recruited Matthew Goniwe, who was murdered by security police in 1985 along with three other UDF organisers, the so-called Cradock Four.
In 1984 Stofile, who had set up the UDF Sports Desk, went to New Zealand to give evidence in a court case to stop a planned All Blacks rugby tour of South Africa. On his return he was detained for four months.
In January 1986 he was part of a UDF delegation to Sweden which held the first detailed strategy session between the UDF and ANC.
On his return he was arrested in Ciskei and sentenced to 11 years under its internal security laws. He was released in 1989 after serving three years.
Stofile helped start the nonracial National Sports Council, which led the campaign to normalise sport after the unbanning of the ANC in 1990.
He adopted a more hardline attitude to South Africa’s readmission to international sport than the head of the ANC Sports Desk, Steve Tshwete, who facilitated the 1991 cricket tour to India. The government wanted a return to sport “not because it will help to bring an end to apartheid but because it will bring honour and complacency to the white minority”, he said.
He opposed Nelson Mandela’s support for the retention of the Springbok emblem. Only after Mandela asked him to visit him at home to discuss “this animal” did Stofile grudgingly give in.
In 1995 Stofile, a member of the ANC’s national executive committee, was elected treasurer-general of the party against the wishes of Mandela, who wanted someone more conversant with financial matters.
This was an indication of Stofile’s influence in the ANC’s Eastern Cape heartland. He was also elected the ANC’s first parliamentary chief whip, in 1994.
In 1997 Thabo Mbeki pushed for him to replace Mandela’s hardcore communist and fellow Rivonia triallist friend Raymond Mhlaba as Eastern Cape premier after Mhlaba had set the province on a path to disaster.
Under Stofile the rot continued. Schools and hospitals disintegrated and corruption exploded. Departments underspent through lack of capacity, and much of what was spent was deemed wasteful and unnecessary by the auditor-general. Ghost civil servants proliferated. Salaries and pensions were paid to people who didn’t exist while genuine pensioners were paid late or not at all.
Between 2002 and 2004, Stofile’s government spent R3-billion on outside consultants. In spite of this, only two out of 40 municipalities in the province received unqualified audits. Many of these didn’t have their accounts audited at all while he was premier.
The situation deteriorated so badly that the national government sent an interim management team to take over the province and probe corruption.
It reported that the Eastern Cape was “in a shambles”. Stofile rejected its report as “unscientific”. Nevertheless, he agreed to quit. In 2004 Mbeki replaced him with Nosimo Balindlela, whom Stofile had fired as education MEC.
The fact that he stayed on as ANC chairman in the province did not make her efforts to fix things any easier.
After his departure, the auditor-general reported that 79% of all the province’s budgets under his premiership could not be accounted for.
A report by retired judge Ronnie Pillay in 2008 suggested that Stofile and members of his family had benefited handsomely from public funds during his premiership. Stofile labelled the report a “conspiracy” and in May 2009 a high court judge threw it out because of an administrative irregularity and because Stofile’s family was not given a chance to respond to the findings.
In 2004 he was appointed sports minister. In 2005 he proposed a law by which all sports teams would have to reflect national demographics. In 2007 he surprised everyone by announcing that there would be no more quotas for national teams.
In 2008 he claimed that the Springbok logo was owned by the government and threatened to sue the South African Rugby Union for millions in royalties.
He told Springbok coach Peter de Villiers to tone down his public remarks. “Goodness, man, get yourself a spokesperson,” he said.
In 2009 he said there would be a “third world war” if the International Association of Athletics Federations tried to prevent South Africa’s 800m world champion Caster Semenya from competing.
In 2011 Jacob Zuma appointed him ambassador to Germany. He retired last year.
Stofile is survived by his wife, Nambitha, and two children.
‘Third world war’ if IAAF tried to bar Caster Semenya