Between 1994 and 2009, she served almost continuously in the Free State Executive Council and held several different portfolios, including as the Free State's inaugural Member of the Executive Council (MEC) for Local Government and Housing from 1994.
[1] After earning a diploma in pedagogics from the University of the North, she worked as a teacher at Naledi High School.
[2] In 1993, she took up work full-time at the ANC's Northern Free State headquarters in Welkom.
[4] In 1997, she was reappointed to the Executive Council as MEC for Social Welfare, a position which she held until the end of the legislative term in 1999;[4] simultaneously, she served as Leader of Government Business in the legislature from 1997 to 1999.
[3] She was re-elected to her legislative seat in the 1999 general election and served as MEC for Health under Premier Winkie Direko from 1999 to 2004.
[1] Her term in the health portfolio coincided with the peak of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa and the Sunday Times later admired the speed with which she had rolled out mother-to-child transmission prevention programmes in public health facilities.
The fraud concerned a large contract for the distribution of school books over a three-year period from 2001 to 2004, when Tsopo had been MEC for Health.
[8] In August 2007, she vacated the education portfolio to become MEC for Social Development in a reshuffle by Marshoff.