Mcebisi Skwatsha

In 1998, Skwatsha was elected as Provincial Secretary of the ANC's Western Cape branch, serving under Provincial Chairperson Ebrahim Rasool; Marius Fransman was his deputy. Early in his tenure, in July 1999, he and five other ANC members were arrested in connection with the 1997 murder of a political activist, Milton Mbewana. The charges were dropped a day later.[2]

Concurrently with his party office, Skwatsha held business interests, including in a private security company.[3][4] By 2008, however, he said that his only commercial interests were ten mobile toilets that he owned with a friend.[5] In addition, he joined the Western Cape Provincial Parliament in the April 2004 general election.[1] He was ranked fourth on the ANC's provincial party list,[6] and he was considered a possible contender for election as Premier of the Western Cape; however, the ANC selected Ebrahim Rasool for that office, and it was Skwatsha who formally nominated Rasool for the position during the parliament's first sitting.[7]

In the aftermath of the election, on 30 April 2004, he was named to the Western Cape Provincial Cabinet as Provincial Minister of Transport and Public Works.[8] However, he served in that office for only a little over a year. In June 2005, at a provincial elective conference at Cape Town's Good Hope Centre, Skwatsha was re-elected as Provincial Secretary, while Rasool was ousted as Provincial Chairperson by James Ngculu, who ran with the support of Skwatsha's so-called "Africanist" faction.[9][10][11] In the aftermath, the ANC said that Skwatsha had agreed to step down from the Western Cape Provincial Cabinet in order to focus on his full-time party office.[12] After some wrangling,[13][14] Marius Fransman was appointed to replace him on 26 July 2005.[15] Skwatsha retained his seat in the Western Cape Provincial Parliament,[1] and his behaviour in the Transport and Public Works portfolio remained controversial after his departure:[16] he was later investigated – and cleared – on a misconduct charge by the provincial parliament's public accounts committee.[17]

Ahead of the ANC's next provincial conference, Skwatsha launched a campaign to succeed Ngculu as Provincial Chairperson. Skwatsha and Ngculu were increasingly at odds as the broader ANC became divided in a national succession contest between Jacob Zuma and President Thabo Mbeki; Skwatsha was a prominent supporter of Zuma's presidential bid.[18][19] The provincial succession contest was also hotly contested. During this period, in June 2008, Skwatsha was stabbed in the neck at a heated ANC meeting in Worcester.[20][21] An ANC Youth League member, Ndikho Tyawana, was convicted of attempted murder.[22]

On 25 September 2008 in Cape Town, Skwatsha was elected unopposed as ANC Provincial Chairperson. Lynne Brown, the recently appointed Premier of the Western Cape, was elected as his deputy.[23] Although Skwatsha stood unopposed, the elections were boycotted by some members, especially supporters of Lerumo Kalako, a supporter of Ngculu and a leadership contender, who claimed that there had been electoral irregularities.[24][25]

His tenure in the party chairmanship was brief. The ANC lost control of the Western Cape government in the April 2009 general election, and the ANC's National Executive Committee appointed an internal inquiry to investigate the party's poor performance in the province. Chris Nissen, who was appointed by Luthuli House to lead the provincial election task team, said openly after the election that he believed the ANC's provincial leadership corps should be dissolved, because "Skwatsha, Max Ozinsky and Garth Strachan were responsible for destroying the ANC in the province in the run-up to the election".[26]

In July 2009, the ANC's national leadership implemented Nissen's recommendation, dissolving the Western Cape Provincial Executive Committee and therefore removing Skwatsha from his office prematurely.[27] Skwatsha conceded that the provincial party was affected by factionalism, but pointed out that he had not had sufficient time to address it during his short tenure in office.[27]

According to the Mail & Guardian, Skwatsha began lobbying for his re-election almost immediately after being removed from the ANC office.[27] That campaign lasted almost two years:[28] the provincial party did not hold fresh leadership elections until it met in Cape Town on 12 February 2011.[29] Yet when the conference opened, Skwatsha unexpectedly withdrew from the race, allowing Marius Fransman to gain election unopposed.[29] Skwatsha's supporters claimed that Skwatsha had not participated because the proceedings were "fraudulent", in particular because the ANC Youth League had not been allowed to vote in the elections.[30]

Although removed from top party office, Skwatsha remained an ordinary Member of the Provincial Parliament during this period.[31][32] Indeed, in late 2009, he was at the centre of a row that broke out in the provincial parliament after Premier Helen Zille claimed that Skwatsha and Max Ozinsky had leaked government information to Zille's Democratic Alliance. Skwatsha strongly denied Zille's claim, calling it tantamount to "treason".[33][34] In addition, at the ANC's 53rd National Conference in December 2012, Skwatsha was elected to a five-year term as a member of the ANC's National Executive Committee.[35]

In the 2014 general election, Skwatsha was elected to an ANC seat in the National Assembly, the lower house of the South African Parliament. After the election, President Zuma appointed him as Deputy Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform; he was one of two deputy ministers in the portfolio, the other being Candith Mashego-Dlamini.[36] Concurrently, he served the rest of his term as a member of the ANC National Executive Committee, but he was not re-elected to the committee upon the expiry of his term in December 2017.[37]

After the 2019 general election, Zuma's successor, President Cyril Ramaphosa, merged the ministry with the Ministry of Agriculture, creating the Ministry of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development. Skwatsha was retained as one of two deputy ministers in the new portfolio.[38]