Speaking to Xolani Gwala on Talk Radio 702, ANC Gauteng chief whip Brian Hlongwa said the decision to send former Eskom head Brian Molefe to Parliament was "astonishing".
Hlongwa argued, in effect, that because there was a cloud hanging over Molefe after what the public protector had said in the State of Capture report, the former Eskom boss was not fit to be an honourable MP.
Referring to rumours of another imminent Cabinet reshuffle, Hlongwa contended that Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan had done very well. As was the case in 2016, with but a few days left before Gordhan delivers his budget speech, it seems the finance minister uzulelwa amanqe (is in great danger) — has dark forces swirling around him ready to strike mortal blows to his political career.
At face value, the decision to send Molefe to Parliament is the clearest sign yet that a Cabinet reshuffle is in the offing. While the general assumption is that Molefe will replace Gordhan, I suspect we should not rule out the possibility that President Jacob Zuma needs a good technocrat to take over the minerals and energy portfolio.
A Cabinet reshuffle must consolidate the president’s control over the security establishment and the Treasury as well as over energy matters.
Broadly speaking, if my political calculations are correct, Zuma needs to be in charge of both the party and those parts of the state that form critical components of his coalition’s agenda of retaining control of the state and the party after the 2017 national conference of the ANC and the 2019 general election. Zuma has systematically reconstructed the ANC Women’s League and ANC Youth League and those parts of the alliance he could not tame, such as the South African Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions, were simply destroyed. The missing piece of my conspiracy theory puzzle is the Treasury.
The president has a political problem and that problem is Gordhan who, in the eyes of many, is the de facto president
Since 1994, there has been some unhappiness in the ANC and the alliance about the Treasury, which stems from perceptions that it is a state within the state and that when its decisions are consistent with ANC policy, that tends to be purely accidental or coincidental.
Accordingly, the Treasury is seen to report and account to actors in the global and domestic economy that are ideological foes of the ANC, whatever that means, because broadly speaking, the ANC has shown very little ideological hostility towards these economic actors.
The current state of our political discourse makes it difficult to assess the veracity of these claims since there is no space for nuance at the moment. So, this matter tends to be reduced to a fairy tale about angels and demons, with preferred outcomes shaping our view of good and evil. Consequently, those who give qualified support to Gordhan are inherently bad and those who give him unqualified support are committed to good governance and democracy. Those who are critical of the president are lackeys of white capital and opponents of transformation.
In the cut and thrust of politics, the nuanced truth is an inconvenience. For some, therefore, this is a battle between two schools of thought, while others see it in terms of two schools of theft.
But this is not Zuma’s most immediate challenge. The president has a political problem and that problem is Gordhan who, in the eyes of many, is the de facto president to whom the markets, ratings agencies, big business, investors and sections of the populace look for leadership.
Trust seems to have broken down completely between the president and his finance minister. Furthermore, the people who plan to erect a statue in honour of Zuma have invested heavily in the removal of Gordhan from the Cabinet. The president must show leadership to his disciples and nothing less than Gordhan’s scalp will satisfy them. Ultimately, however, the Cabinet reshuffle will be a rebalancing exercise. It will be an attempt to reclaim the ground the president has been losing since December 9 2015.
Large tracts of that ground are occupied by the Treasury and the finance minister. If some of Zuma’s supporters have their way, the Treasury has to be taught the lesson of political compliance.
In this regard, some Treasury officials have intimated privately that they are under political pressure to allocate funds to projects that are on the wrong side of fiscal prudence. Two of these are the nuclear deal and the Mhlathuze water project.
On the other hand, some of Zuma’s supporters have intimated privately that the Treasury is refusing to allocate funds to radical economic transformation.
My advice to the president and the finance minister is that each must dig two graves … just in case.
• Matshiqi is an independent political analyst
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