President Cyril Ramaphosa has turned to loyal supporter and seasoned campaigner Senzo Mchunu to head the water and sanitation department which has been hived off into a separate ministry.
Water and sanitation used to be a separate department from human settlements but under the same minister Lindiwe Sisulu. Given the enormity of SA’s water challenges and the fact that water management goes beyond human settlements, Ramaphosa has created a separate ministry for it. As he noted in his address to the nation on Thursday night water is also crucial for mining, agriculture and industry, as well as environmental management. It is also crucial for human sustainability, the president said.
Mchunu, fresh from having secured a better-than-expected wage agreement with public sector trade unions as minister of public service and administration, is now faced with the task, among other things, of stabilising the water boards that are responsible for bulk water supply and which have been plagued in the recent past by leadership ructions and corruption.
Mchunu certainly appears to have the necessary resolve for the job. The former premier of KwaZulu-Natal and provincial party chair backed Ramaphosa to replace former president Jacob Zuma at the ANC elective conference in December 2017, notwithstanding the province’s strong support for Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, Zuma’s ex-wife and his preferred successor. Mchunu was Ramaphosa’s choice for the post of ANC secretary-general, a position he lost narrowly to the now-suspended Ace Magashule.
Mchunu has been active in politics since his university days and served in the first structures of the ANC after it was unbanned in 1990.
Acknowledged for his courage and integrity, Mchunu was born into a poor family at eNhlwathi near Hlabisa in northern KwaZulu-Natal in 1958. He later came into conflict with the Inkatha-ruled homeland leaders. Despite threats from the establishment that he would never be placed in a school, he ended up teaching for six years before entering politics full time in 1991.
With Carol Paton
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