Makhenkesi Stofile

Makhenkesi Arnold Stofile (27 December 1944 – 15 August 2016) was a South African politician and anti-apartheid activist who served as the second Premier of the Eastern Cape from 1997 to 2004. After that, he was Minister of Sport and Recreation from 2004 to 2010. He was also a member of the National Executive Committee of the African National Congress (ANC).

Born in the Eastern Cape, Stofile was an ordained minister of the Presbyterian Church of Southern Africa and spent much of the apartheid era as a theologian at the University of Fort Hare. At the same time, he had joined the ANC underground in 1970, and in 1983 he became involved in the United Democratic Front, both as regional secretary in the Border Region and as a member of the national executive. In 1987, he was convicted of a political offence and imprisoned in the Ciskei for three years. Himself an accomplished rugby player, Stofile was also an active figure in non-racial sports administration in the Eastern Cape, and he co-founded the South African Council on Sport in 1989.

After the end of apartheid in 1994, Stofile joined the National Assembly as the ANC's inaugural Majority Chief Whip. He held that position until February 1997, when he returned to his home province to replace Raymond Mhlaba as Premier of the Eastern Cape. He was also the national Treasurer of the ANC from 1994 to 1997 and its Provincial Chairperson in the Eastern Cape from 1996 to 2006.

Stofile returned to the national government after the April 2004 general election, appointed as Minister of Sport and Recreation in the second cabinet of President Thabo Mbeki. During his tenure in the ministry, South Africa hosted the 2010 FIFA World Cup. After President Jacob Zuma sacked Stofile from the cabinet in October 2010, he served as South African Ambassador to Germany between 2011 and 2015, when he retired.