Mantsheng Anna Tsopo

Mantsheng Anna "Ouma" Tsopo (1 September 1962 – 1 January 2017) was a South African politician who represented the African National Congress (ANC) in the Free State Provincial Legislature from 1994 to 2014. 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.

After the 2009 general election, Tsopo left the Executive Council but remained in the provincial legislature, where she served as Deputy Speaker, as acting Speaker, and then, from June 2013, as Speaker. In the 2014 general election, she was elected to a seat in the National Assembly, but she resigned from Parliament several months later in October 2014. She was a teacher by profession and a regional leader in the ANC Women's League.

Early life and career Tsopo was born on 1 September 1962 in Hennenman in the former Orange Free State. She grew up in Theunissen and matriculated at Lebogang Secondary School in Welkom in 1978. She returned to Theunissen in 1988 to work as an administrator at the Masilo Town Council, where she remained until 1993. – completed a bachelor's degree in management and leadership and a master's degree in public administration, both from the University of the Free State. While she was in that position, her husband, Sandile, was prosecuted for defrauding her department, the Free State Department of Education. 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. Sandile and two others were convicted of defrauding the Department of Education of more than R360,000. In January 2007, the Bloemfontein Regional Court sentenced him to serve four years' imprisonment. He was denied leave to appeal. In August 2007, she vacated the education portfolio to become MEC for Social Development in a reshuffle by Marshoff.

In the next general election in 2009, Tsopo was re-elected to the provincial legislature, ranked 12th on the ANC's provincial party list, but she was not appointed to the Executive Council of Marshoff's successor, Premier Ace Magashule. Instead she became Deputy Speaker of the Free State Provincial Legislature. She held that position until the end of the legislative term in May 2014. She died in hospital in the early hours of 1 January 2017. The President of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, granted her a provincial official state funeral, held in Meloding in Virginia, Free State.

She was married to Sandile Tsopo and had four children, one of whom, Thabang, predeceased her.