Ntopile Kganyago

Kganyago was born on 10 December 1940.^[1] He is from Seshego in the Northern Transvaal, part of present-day Limpopo Province.^[2] He matriculated in 1964 at Emmerantia Geldenhuys Skool in the region.^[3]

Initially trained as a carpenter, he worked briefly as a court interpreter in 1965 and 1966 before training as a teacher in Mafikeng; he was a school teacher between 1968 and 1976.^[3] In 1976, the year of the Soweto uprising, he joined the Department of Education as an administrator, first as a school inspector for psychological services and then, from 1980 to 1996, as the department's head of psychological services.^[3] He was a registered educational psychologist and a member of the Psychological Society of South Africa and Southern African Association for Learning and Educational Disabilities.^[3]

During his early career, Kganyago completed a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of South Africa in 1974, a Bachelor of Education degree at the University of the North in 1987, and a Master's degree in school psychology at the University of Delaware in 1989.^[3]

In 1996, after the end of apartheid, Kganyago left his government job to return to his alma mater, the University of the North, where he was a student counsellor in the university's counseling centre until 2004.^[3] During that time he joined the United Democratic Movement (UDM) and became the chairperson of his local branch.^[3] From 2000 to 2004, he represented the party as a local councillor in the Polokwane Local Municipality.^[3]

Kganyago was briefly a member of the UDM's caucus in the Limpopo Provincial Legislature in early 2004.^[3] In the April 2004 general election, he was elected to represent the UDM in the National Assembly, the lower house of the South African Parliament.^[1]

In the aftermath of the election he was additionally appointed as Deputy Minister of Public Works as part of President Thabo Mbeki's initiative to ensure opposition representation in his second-term cabinet. He was sworn in late, on 10 May 2004 at Tuynhuys, because Mbeki had initially offered the post to Musa Zondi of Inkatha Freedom Party.^[4][5] He served in the deputy ministerial portfolio throughout the Third Parliament, retaining the post when Kgalema Motlanthe replaced Mbeki in a midterm presidential election.^[6][7] In the portfolio, Kganyago deputised Minister Stella Sigcau until her death in 2006, Minister Thoko Didiza from 2006 to 2008, and Minister Geoff Doidge from 2008 to 2009.^[6][8]

Kganyago was the UDM's provincial leader in Limpopo when he entered the deputy ministerial position,^[9] but over the course of the parliamentary term he became the party's national deputy president; the former deputy president, Malizole Diko, had been expelled from the party in 2005.^[10]

In the next general election in April 2009, Kganyago was re-elected to his parliamentary seat.^[11] He had been ranked second on the UDM's national party list and had also stood, unsuccessfully, as its candidate for election as Premier of Limpopo.^[12][13] President Motlanthe's successor, Jacob Zuma, appointed Hendrietta Bogopane-Zulu to succeed him as deputy minister after the election,^[14] though he remained in the National Assembly as a backbencher.

After a short illness, Kganyago died in hospital in Centurion, Gauteng on 17 July 2013.^[15][16] He was buried in Polokwane after a funeral at the Seshego Stadium; in his eulogy, UDM leader Bantu Holomisa recounted that Kganyago was universally nicknamed "Prof" because he was "widely regarded as a pedagogue".^[17] Chief Whip Smuts Ngonyama described Kganyago was "a great linguist" with a knack for switching between different South African languages, and Pieter Groenewald of the Freedom Front said that Kganyago was better at speaking Afrikaans than he was.^[2] Nqabayomzi Kwankwa filled his seat in the National Assembly.^[11]

He was married to Anna Phuti Kganyago, with whom he had nine children and several grandchildren.^[18] His nephew, Lesetja Kganyago, became the governor of the South African Reserve Bank.^[19]