Kgomotso Paul Harry Ditshetelo (16 October 1936 – 11 October 2011) was a South African politician who represented the United Christian Democratic Party (UCDP) in the National Assembly from 1999 to 2009. He was also the deputy president of the UCDP from 1998 to 2011. During apartheid, he was a politician and civil servant in Bophuthatswana.

Political career

Ditshetelo was born on 16 October 1936 in the region that later became the North West province. In 1972, he was a founding member of Lucas Mangope's Tswana National Party, and he also worked in Mangope's government in the Bophuthatswana homeland, serving as a secretary in Bophuthatswana's "embassy" in Pretoria from 1978 to 1988. In 1989, he was appointed as a governor in the homeland government, stationed at Kudumane.

Post-apartheid political career

When the Tswana National Party (since renamed the Christian Democratic Party) was restyled as the UCDP in 1994, Ditshetelo became its inaugural secretary-general. He subsequently deputised Mangope as the UCDP's deputy president from 1998 until January 2011, when he stepped down due to ill health. At the same time, from 1999 to 2009, Ditshetelo represented the UCDP in the National Assembly, the lower house of the post-apartheid South African Parliament; he was elected in

1999 File:1999 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The funeral procession of King Hussein of Jordan in Amman; the 1999 İzmit earthquake kills over 17,000 people in Turkey; the Columbine High School massacre, one of the first major school shootin ...

and re-elected in

2004 2004 was designated as an International Year of Rice by the United Nations, and the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle Against Slavery and its Abolition (by UNESCO). Events January * January 3 – Flash Airlines Flight 6 ...

. He was elected to a third term in

2009 File:2009 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The vertical stabilizer of Air France Flight 447 is pulled out from the Atlantic Ocean; Barack Obama becomes the first African American to become President of the United States; 2009 Iran ...

but declined to be sworn into the seat.

Personal life and death

He was married to politician Celia Ditshetelo, with whom he had three children and several grandchildren. He died on 11 October 2011 in a hospital in Johannesburg after a lengthy illness.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ditshetelo, Paul South African civil servants 1936 births 2011 deaths Members of the National Assembly of South Africa 21st-century South African politicians 20th-century South African politicians United Christian Democratic Party politicians Tswana people