Professor Mokgoro is returning for a second time as the North West premier. He was brought in by the ANC National Working Committee (NWC) to stabilise the province after the party’s provincial chairperson, Supra Mahumapelo, resigned in 2018 amid growing public pressure for him to leave office.
The 71-year-old master of public administration degree-holder was the first director general of the North West province in post apartheid South Africa. He faced a mammoth task of merging three government administrations into one and is said to have done that with ease.
Mokgoro has also served as the head of the national school of government in Pretoria. He is known as a task master, who is good at whipping politicians into shape. He has also worked as a policy analyst for the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) and the director-general of the South African Management Development Institute.
He was born in Kimberley in the Northern Cape and moved to the North West province after taking up a lecturing job at the then University of Bophuthatswana.
ANC secretary general, Ace Magashule, has hinted the appointment could be changed once the province is stable. “We looked at the different proposals. There were people to be considered but those people were not on the list of the ANC and we therefore agreed that comrade Job Mokgoro should remain Premier of the North West so that we stabilise that province and at the right time, I think, we will then interact on that matter.”
Listen to the ANC North West Women’s League Deputy Secretary, Bitsa Lenkopane’s response to the news:
