Additionally, from December 2008 he was a Member of the Executive Council for Roads and Transport in the Limpopo provincial government under Premier Sello Moloto.
Cassel Charlie Mathale was born on 23 January 1961[1] in Tzaneen outside Polokwane in what was then the Northern Transvaal, now Limpopo province.
[2] Additionally, in 1990, Mathale was appointed as a member of its interim leadership core of the Northern Transvaal branch of the African National Congress (ANC), which had recently been unbanned by the apartheid government and was re-establishing its structures inside South Africa.
[1] Although it was a full-time position based at ANC headquarters, the Mail & Guardian observed that Mathale was simultaneously a "well-known entrepreneur" in Limpopo, with directorships in at least ten companies in the mining, construction, farming, and hospitality sectors.
[6] In early 2008, Mathale and Moloto's rivalry became highly divisive in the Limpopo ANC; their respective supporters clashed violently on several occasions.
[8][9][10] Finally, in December 2008, Moloto appointed Mathale as Member of the Executive Council (MEC) for Roads and Transport,[1] after the incumbent, Justice Piitso, resigned.
[1] In March 2009, Moloto resigned as Premier and defected from the ANC to the Congress of the People, a new pro-Mbeki breakaway party.
Discontent rested partly with the Limpopo provincial branches of the ANC's partners in the Tripartite Alliance, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the South African Communist Party (SACP), which had publicly called for Mathale's resignation, accusing him of presiding over a corrupt administration.
[17] In January 2012, after Mathale's re-election as ANC chair, the full scale of the province's administrative and financial problems emerged.
Both the Auditor-General and the national Ministry of Finance reported publicly about the R2-billion budget shortfall faced by the Limpopo government, which they said was caused by a lack of spending restraint, including significant expenditure on contracts marred by procurement irregularities; both appeared to blame the crisis on the province's political leadership.
[18][19][20][21] In February, a spokesman for the Hawks said that Mathale, his wife, and Julius Malema were under investigation on allegations of corruption and business irregularities.
ANC Secretary General Gwede Mantashe said that the Mathale-led committee had been dissolved "for displaying totally un-ANC behaviour and institutionalised factional conflict".
[27] In July 2013, the national leadership of the ANC asked Mathale to resign as Premier, "recalling" him from the post in line with the party's cadre deployment policy.
In the statement, he insisted that he and his administration had, "contrary to the wrong perception", strongly opposed "all forms of corruption within our jurisdiction".