Godfrey Oliphant

Godfrey Oliphant is the Deputy Minister of Mineral Resources of the Republic of South Africa a position he has held since November 2010 and to which he was re-appointed in May 2014.

He is a member of the Central Committee of the South African Communist Party and a member of the Task Team of the African National Congress (ANC) in North West. Mr Oliphant has been a Member of Parliament representing the ANC from 1994.

Mr Oliphant matriculated at Huhudi High School in the Vryburg area of the Northern Cape and pursued tertiary studies in Economics.Mr Oliphant has been chairperson of various portfolio committees, including the Portfolio Committee on Public Works; the Portfolio Committee on Science and Technology; the Portfolio Committee on Labour; and the Portfolio Committee on Mineral and Energy. He has also been chairperson of the ANC Chairpersons’ Study Group.

He has been a Trade Union representative; vice president of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu); a national executive member of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM); chairperson of the National Education Committee of Cosatu; and chairperson of Cosatu for the Northern Cape and Free State regions.

Mr Oliphant was a member of the Central Committee of the South African Communist Party (SACP); a member of the Regional Executive Committee of the NUM) and a fulltime shop steward of NUM for De Beers Consolidated Mines. He was also part of the interim leadership core of the ANC in the Northern Cape in 1990.

Mr Oliphant was provincial deputy chairperson of the ANC in the Northern Cape; branch chairperson of NUM Finsch Mine; chairperson of the SACP?s Warrenton Branch; and chairperson of NUM’s Branch Education Committee.