Kopeng Obed Bapela (born 28 February 1958) is a South African politician who is currently serving as the Deputy Minister of Public Enterprises since 6 March 2023. Before that, he was Deputy Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs from 2014 to 2023. A member of the African National Congress (ANC), he has been a member of the National Assembly since 2002 and a deputy minister since 2010.
Bapela rose to prominence through the anti-apartheid movement in Alexandra, and he served in the Gauteng Provincial Legislature from 1994 to 1999. After joining Parliament in 2002, he rose to become Chairperson of the National Assembly before President Jacob Zuma appointed him as Deputy Minister of Communications from 2010 to 2011. After that he served as Deputy Minister in the Presidency from 2011 to 2014 and then as Deputy Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs from 2014 until 2023, when President Cyril Ramaphosa appointed him to his current position.
A longstanding member of the ANC, Bapela was formerly Provincial Secretary of the party's Gauteng branch. He has been a member of the ANC National Executive Committee since 2012 and has been particularly active in foreign affairs, including as the party's head of international relations between 2013 and 2015.
Early life and career
Bapela was born on 28 February 1958 in Alexandra, a township outside Johannesburg in the former Transvaal Province. He was the eldest of seven children, with four brothers and two sisters. With their mother and stepfather, they lived in a one-room house in Alexandra, except for a brief period in the late 1960s, when Bapela lived with his grandfather in Ga-Masemola in the Northern Transvaal.
Bapela's first substantive involvement in political organising was during the 1976 Soweto uprising; still in high school, he was involved in the protests in Alexandra and became a student activist in the aftermath. He and other activists were expelled from their school in 1978, but he earned several tertiary certificates and a diploma in journalism. He trained as a cadet reporter at the Weekly Mail, in a cohort of trainees that also included Ferial Haffajee.
At the same time, his involvement in anti-apartheid activism intensified in the early 1980s. In 1979, he joined underground structures of the African National Congress (ANC), which at the time was banned inside South Africa; in his ANC activism, he worked closely with Paul Mashatile and other activists in Alexandra. He was also a member of the Congress of South African Students, and in 1983 he became a founding member both of the Alexandra Youth Congress and of the United Democratic Front. He was later the deputy president of the Alexandra Youth Congress.
In May 1986, he was elected as publicity secretary in the executive of the Alexandra Action Committee, chaired by Moses Mayekiso; his involvement in the committee led to his indictment in the Rand Supreme Court on treason charges, with Bapela, Mayekiso, Richard Mdakane, and two others accused of attempting to render Alexandra "ungovernable". He was detained on several other occasions in the 1980s and remained on trial between 1987 and 1990. The ANC was unbanned in 1990 during the negotiations to end apartheid, and Bapela became involved in the party's newly re-established overt structures, serving as regional secretary of its PWV regional branch from 1991 to 1994.
Post-apartheid political career
In the first post-apartheid elections in April 1994, Bapela was elected to represent the ANC in the Gauteng Provincial Legislature. He served a single term in his seat, leaving in 1999. During the term, he chaired the legislature's portfolio committee on safety and security. In the same period, he was Deputy Provincial Secretary and then Provincial Secretary of the ANC's Gauteng branch.
After that, in 2000, Bapela was assigned to the ANC's headquarters at Luthuli House, where he was the party's coordinator for international relations. He joined the National Assembly in 2002, filling a casual vacancy. He has served continuously in the National Assembly since then: he was elected to a full term in the seat in the 2004 general election and later was appointed as chairperson of the assembly, deputised by Andries Nel. He also remained involved in foreign policy; in 2005, the Mail & Guardian named him one of 100 people who would "shape South Africa in the decade ahead", in his case as "a growing force in foreign affairs".