Cabinet reshuffles — ubiquitous during the Zuma era — tend to be anxiety-inducing. The rumour mill is on overdrive and it seems it is now only a question of when President Cyril Ramaphosa will make some changes to his executive.
Many in the ANC national executive committee will not want to have their phones away from them in anticipation of “that” phone call. Ramaphosa is working from Cape Town this week, and those anticipating changes will want to be a few minutes drive to his Tuynhuys office in the parliamentary precinct or his presidential home, Genadendal, in the picturesque Rondebosch suburb of the Mother City. It is also an anxious time for ministers who may be in the firing line. More anxious will be the ministerial aides, who lose their jobs with just a month’s notice of the removal of a minister.
Constitutionally, the appointment to the executive is the prerogative of the president.
In 2015, then president Jacob Zuma dramatically fired Nhlanhla Nene, the finance minister, starting a trend of late-night statements firing ministers and announcing new ones. Two years later, Zuma repeated the act, firing one of Nene’s successors, Pravin Gordhan, without as much as a courtesy call telling him of the axing.
Thabo Mbeki — president from 1999 to 2008, was not one to change his leadership team “mid-season”. In nine years at the Union Buildings, it was only Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge who earned the ire of Mbeki in 2007, at the height of the Aids controversy. The president’s office stated that the dismissal was because Madlala-Routledge had travelled without permission to Madrid to attend the International Aids Vaccine Initiative conference.
He did make other changes though, prompted by the death of safety & security minister Steve Tshwete in 2002, replacing him with Charles Nqakula. Mbeki was criticised within the ANC for replacing Tshwete with someone whose mother tongue was also Xhosa. More explicitly, the change sparked derision about a “Xhosa Nostra” being in control of the governing party.
Mbeki had his new would-be cabinet ministers after the 2004 election lining up into the night. They waited in the foyer at the Mahlamba Ndlopfu residence.
Makhenkesi Stofile told me in an interview that he got his turn to meet the president at about 3am. He was appointed sports minister.
It was common during the Zuma years for ministers to converge in one of the ministerial houses at the Bryntirion Estate in Pretoria, waiting for “the call”. The estate includes the Mahlamba Ndlopfu residence of the president — though Ramaphosa chooses to stay in his private home in Hyde Park, Johannesburg. It may be a bit of a drive to Hyde Park for some, should he wish to run the appointment meetings in person.
Ramaphosa has two ministerial vacancies to fill: public service and administration, vacated when Ayanda Dlodlo joined the World Bank last April, and the transport ministry to be vacated by Fikile Mbalula, who was elected to the full-time role of ANC secretary-general in December.
He is expected to appoint former Gauteng premier David Makhura to the public service & administration portfolio and former KwaZulu-Natal premier Sihle Zikalala as transport minister. Having earned a second term as ANC head, Ramaphosa is under pressure to deliver results in a country struggling with high unemployment and low economic growth.
He is a conciliatory president and will look to consult other party bosses and leaders of Cosatu and the SA Communist Party (SACP), which are in alliance with the ANC. The allies do not always have their way with the president though. But their input and approval is regarded as key for any ANC president.
This time, Ramaphosa will also have to consider input from another critical bloc in the economy, the business sector. A week ago organised business lobbied the president for “able” ministers.
Ministers need to be “intellectually inquisitive and able to seek out global best practice and expertise, and synthesise this with local conditions” said Business Leadership SA CEO Busi Mavuso. “They must be able to listen and assess complex, often competing, claims with an open mind in the best interests of all South Africans. They must be willing to change their views in the face of evidence,” she said in an open letter to Ramaphosa.
These qualities seem to be limited in the ANC at the moment and the president is going to have a tough time choosing. More so at this time when the nation is going for hours without power and his party's political fortunes are dwindling.
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