Presidential spokesperson Thabo Masebe said on Tuesday that Matsepe-Casaburri, whose health hasn’t been good in the last couple of months, died at a Pretoria hospital. She was 71.<\/p>\n
"She was admitted in hospital about three weeks ago, she hasn’t been at work for a long time because of her health," said Masebe.<\/p>\n
Expressing his condolences to her family and friends, President Kgalema Motlanthe said Matsepe-Casaburri was "an outstanding leader and servant of the people of South Africa".<\/p>\n
"In her various leadership capacities and responsibilities, she has served the country with distinction, honour and selflessness," Motlanthe in a statement.<\/p>\n
"With her incisive intellect she has made an invaluable contribution to the development of policy in various fields including Information and Communication Technology.<\/p>\n
"On behalf of the government and the people of South Africa and, indeed on my own behalf, I express heartfelt condolences to the family and friends of Dr Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri," he said.<\/p>\n
Among others positions, Matsepe-Casaburri was the first woman to be appointed to the board of the CSIR; the first black person and woman to become chairperson of SENTECH; the first female and black chairperson of the board of the South African Broadcasting Corporation from 1993 1997.<\/p>\n
She was also the first female premier, as premier of the Free State from 1997 to 1999. In 1999 she became a member of Parliament and minister of communications.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Communications Minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri died of natural causes on Monday night, the Presidency said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-telecoms"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7621"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7621\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}