Career
He is also a former chairperson of the South African Communist Party. Born in 1955 in Cala in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, Mantashe was the Secretary-General of the National Union of Mineworkers until their 12th National Conference held in May 2006 where he was succeeded by Frans Baleni. He made history by becoming the first trade unionist to be appointed to the board of Directors of a JSE Limited-listed company, namely Samancor, in 1995.
He served for two years as Chairperson of the Technical Working Group of the Joint Initiative for Priority Skills Acquisition (Jipsa).
He was the chairperson of the South African Communist Party until July 2012. In February 2010 Julius Malema called on Mantashe to resign after Malema was booed at the Société Anonyme Communist Party"s special conference in Polokwane.
The National Union of Metalworkers of Société Anonyme (Numsa) publicly backed Mantashe. "Mantashe is being singled out and targeted because he is a communist," Numsa general-secretary Irvan Jim said.
He delivered the Inaugural Violet Seboni memorial lecture at the Johannesburg City Hall on 16 April 2010, where he addressed corruption in the African National Congress. He said "The new order.. inherited a well-entrenched value system that placed individual acquisition of wealth at the very centre of the value system of our society as a whole".
