Where were we? The year ended the way it started, with South Africa still in the doldrums. Pick any index or unit of measure. Unemployment. Growth. Inflation. Crime. Public services. They all paint a picture of a nation in decline.
At this rate, economic and political regression will be our friends for a long time.
One person who could afford a smile over Christmas was President Cyril Ramaphosa, who, unsurprisingly, was re-elected ANC president. His counterpart in Brazil, Lula da Silva, made a stunning comeback and was on January 1 officially installed as that country’s leader. Lula is not mucking around, determined to make a remarkable comeback. Will he? We don’t know.
Ramaphosa has been gifted an opportunity to speed up change within the ANC and government, so there could be social and economic improvement. He has less than five years to make meaningful change, as the ANC will soon look past him to his potential successor.
Immediately, he has the 2024 election to worry about as the party is likely to drop below 50%. He does not have time.
Naturally, a lot has to give with a new national executive committee (NEC). He has to look into incorporating new members of the NEC into his cabinet. Of course, he can choose not to do that, but that would bring fresh upheaval.
The NEC is the most powerful organ of the ANC between its five-year conferences and idle minds in that structure could create fertile ground for dysfunction.
There are several easy targets for the axe. Ministers such as Naledi Pandor and Blade Nzimande did not crack the nod for NEC election, but that is not reason enough to do away with them. They are experienced (and the most educated) and any perception that they have been ill-treated may ripple through the ANC.
Add to that duo personalities such as Angie Motshekga, minister of basic education since 2009, and you realise Ramaphosa is in a pickle.
Humiliating friends may not have been part of his new year’s resolutions. He can easily get rid of no-name-brand politicians like Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, the minister for everyone but men.
She was foreign affairs minister (can you believe it) under Jacob Zuma and Ramaphosa made her minister in the Presidency for women, youth and persons with disabilities.
The last time we officially heard of her, she was in a foreign news TV show interview during which she spoke of early childhood chores such as fetching water on her head with pails that left a hole in it.
Every time I see her, she looks as if she is about to doze off; probably, there is more to the “sleepist” moniker she earned for sleeping through parliament’s debates.
Ramaphosa owes us. He and Nkoana-Mashabane should pay back all salaries and bodyguard costs since 2019, since there is no proof she has done anything worthy. That she was kept on for this long shows Ramaphosa’s ambitions. Firing her in 2019 would not have had comebacks.
Ramaphosa can choose expediency and fiddle around with the ANC’s realpolitik. Or he can go for broke and do a wholesale reshuffle. Whatever his choice, he is limited by the available skills pool
There are ministers such as Bheki Cele, in charge of the police. He is unlikely to get the chop, but he is begging for it. Crime is crippling businesses and private lives every day, and all Cele does is put on the best hats and prepare for ribbon-cutting and related publicity stunts.
Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma can be removed, but that might play into the hands of the ANC’s opposition in KwaZulu-Natal, her home province. She has more grassroots appeal than Lindiwe Sisulu, the tourism minister.
Then you get Ebrahim Patel, the quintessential political nerd. Everybody loves to hate himP and box him as a communist when he is probably more socially democratic than anything else.
What does Ramaphosa do with him? He can’t be relegated to the sport ministry as he hates people and joy. All “EP” wants is to write documents no-one will read and annoy the hell out of business with his industrialisation gobbledegook.
Ramaphosa can choose expediency and fiddle around with the ANC’s realpolitik. Or he can go for broke and do a wholesale reshuffle. Whatever his choice, he is limited by the available skills pool.
The new NEC comes from the same broken ANC. (He can appoint up to two people to his cabinet who still need to be MPs.) He cannot do anything better than what the ANC represents: a tired party with no new ideas or fresh calibre of leadership.
I am not one of those who think Ramaphosa’s second term will be different. The structural problems are overwhelming and the ANC’s dysfunction is at the heart of our difficulties. It cannot be fixed from inside, as we have heard in the past 20 years.
A historic second term will require a ballsy Ramaphosa, something we did not see in his first term at the helm of the ANC. He has an easy-to-work-out but hard-to-execute task.
• Mkokeli is lead partner at public affairs consultancy Mkokeli Advisory.
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