Lyndall Fanisa Shope-Mafole (; born 1957 or 1958) is a South African politician and former civil servant who was the general secretary of the Congress of the People (COPE) from 2014 to 2019. She led COPE's caucus in the Gauteng Provincial Legislature from 2009 until 2014, when she failed to gain re-election.
Born into the African National Congress (ANC) to anti-apartheid stalwarts Mark and Gertude Shope, Shope-Mafole was raised and educated in exile during apartheid. She was briefly a member of the ANC's National Executive Committee from December 2007 until October 2008, when she resigned to become a founding member of COPE. Before joining the provincial legislature, Shope-Mafole had a high-profile career in telecommunications policy and governance, most proximately as director-general in the Department of Communications from 2004 to 2009.
Early life
Shope-Mafole was born in 1957 or 1958 in Johannesburg in the former Transvaal. Her parents are Gertrude Shope and Mark Shope, both stalwarts of the anti-apartheid movement and African National Congress (ANC). She has four siblings: Thaninga Shope-Linney is a former SABC manager and diplomat; Lenin Shope was also a diplomat; and two half-sisters born to her father, Ntombi and Sheila, were also ANC politicians.
Her parents went into exile after the ANC was banned by the apartheid government in 1960, and Shope-Mafole lived in Zimbabwe with her aunt. She later lived with her parents at ANC missions in Botswana, Czechoslovakia, Zambia, and Tanzania. She was a member of the ANC's children's wing in exile, the Young Pioneers. According to Shope-Mafole, when she was at high school in Zambia, she qualified to compete in the Olympics but was unable to participate because she could not represent South Africa, her home country.
She later lived in Cairo and New York with her husband, who was an ANC representative. She completed a Master of Science in telecommunications engineering at the José Antonio Echeverría Higher Institute of Technology in Havana, Cuba, in 1983, and she returned to South Africa in the 1990s during the democratic transition.
Civil service: 1994–2009
Independent Broadcasting Authority: 1994–1997
During an advanced stage of the transition, in March 1994, Shope-Mafole was appointed as a member of the inaugural council of the new Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA); her term was renewed by Parliament in 1996. In that capacity, she represented South Africa at the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) in Geneva. The Mail & Guardian said that, despite being an ordinary councillor, she was considered "almost as powerful" as IBA's chairs.
However, in 1997, Shope-Mafole was named by the Auditor-General – in a report leaked to the press in May – as one of the councillors who used IBA credit cards to purchase private luxuries. Shope-Mafole said that private use of the cards was authorised in terms of IBA policy provided that the councillors eventually repaid the money. Although she and the other councillors initially held a press conference at which they said they would not resign, they were forced to do so later in 1997 after facing heavy criticism from Parliament's Standing Committee on Public Accounts.
Communications policy: 1997–2004
After leaving IBA, Shope-Mafole was appointed as an adviser to Jay Naidoo, then the Minister of Communications. In February 1999, she was appointed as South Africa's permanent representative to the ITU in Geneva, formally a diplomatic posting with close ties to Naidoo's ministry. Naidoo was succeeded by Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri after the 1999 general election and Shope-Mafole was described as a key "unofficial adviser" to Matsepe-Casaburri, in parallel with her official posting in Geneva.
In subsequent years, she held various positions in communications policy and governance, including as the chairperson of President Thabo Mbeki's Presidential National Commission on Information Society and Development, chairperson of the ITU council, and member of the United Nations Information and Communication Technologies Task Force.
Communications DG: 2004–2009
On 15 September 2004, President Mbeki appointed Shope-Mafole as the director-general in the Department of Communications, still under the political leadership of Matsepe-Casaburri. She remained in that position until February 2009. At the end of 2006, the Mail & Guardian gave her an "E" grade as director-general, saying that the department was "having no real impact"; Shope-Mafole said that she would give herself a "C".