Oh, my, he will appoint a minister of electricity, which should rank among the most prominent non-ideas we have seen in a long time. But I can see why. President Cyril Ramaphosa is at war with his colleagues in the ANC.
At December's Nasrec conference, the party resolved Eskom should be moved from the department of public enterprises (DPE) to that of energy.
Ramaphosa had to find a way around that. He is under pressure not to allow mineral resources & energy (DMRE) minister Gwede Mantashe to run amok with the power utility.
At the same time, he does not want to humiliate his trusted ally, Pravin Gordhan, at the DPE by taking away the most significant asset in his portfolio. Gordhan is not in the game of losing political battles and the ruse of a minister of electricity demonstrates his influence and back-room dexterity.
We are watching a terrible game while Rome burns. A minister in the Presidency will not much change how Eskom is run if the DPE remains in charge as shareholder representative and the DMRE drives energy policy.
We will end up with four ministers involved in the crisis, the first being the one for electricity. Another will oversee Eskom, the company.
The finance minister has to buy diesel regularly to keep the lights on and simultaneously worry about the company's debt profile. The DMRE minister has to deal with new generation capacity and demand, including self-generation by businesses and homes.
It's the proverbial question of how many ANC politicians it will take to fix a light bulb.
The National Energy Crisis Committee (NECC) will benefit from creating the electricity minister role. It will have a politician to provide political cover to the committee's work, attend cabinet meetings and play at the same level as Gordhan, Mantashe and finance minister Enoch Godongwana.
The minister will have no budget or department as they would exist within the Presidency, with just bodyguards and a few political aides, like a chief-of-staff, two political advisers and a spokesperson.
Effectively, the incumbent will be an extra pair of eyes for Ramaphosa because, among established ANC politicians, there is not a single person he wholly trusts to do the job.
Nothing about the announcement suggests Eskom will perform better. Also, Gordhan will not easily hand power to the new minister. He will still be the one who interacts regularly with its board and management.
Success will come when we depend less on Eskom and have a dynamic energy industry. Zoning in on the power utility will encourage a misdiagnosis of the problem and yield poor solutions
Mantashe will still have room to politic about how badly run Eskom is, while simultaneously theorising about baseload and the required energy mix.
This is the ANC's last year as the sole ruling party. The 2024 elections will whittle down its power. And if it returns, it will come back with the help of coalition partners. They will make governing very complicated.
The chaotic scenes we see in parliament at every state of the nation address will pale into insignificance compared with the potential drama of cabinet meetings under a coalition.
If the EFF is in the room, we can expect regular tantrums and threats of walkouts that will make decision-making impossible. If the DA and the ANC choose to go it together, there could be serious disagreements too.
As for Ramaphosa, he will rue all the missed opportunities since he became president in 2018. He ought to by now have given a clear direction on the state he wants to create and started implementing that.
The non-idea of a minister of electricity demonstrates his utterly poor grasp of public administration conceptualisation.
Electricity is not the sum of energy. A future-perfect approach would recognise the distinction between energy and electricity. While there is an Eskom crisis, a solution comes from a comprehensive plan in the context of our macro- and microeconomic evolution trends.
Success will come when we depend less on Eskom and have a dynamic energy industry. Zoning in on the power utility will encourage a misdiagnosis of the problem and yield poor solutions.
At a macro level, it will encourage narrow-mindedness in public policy. Thinking facetiously, very soon the idea of a minister of schools might spring up.
Speaking of education, the president spoke glowingly about the heroics of the 2022 matric class, which did well despite the severe impact of the pandemic. He ignored how, in a decade, the matric class will demonstrate the real tragedy.
We are already hearing that the early grades have lost months, if not years, of education from the Covid-19 years, which will hamper their way through the school system. Already, more considerable skill and economic underdevelopment levels have been fermented.
Meanwhile, our chief politician demonstrates a poor grasp of public policy and how bureaucracy can respond to our deep and structural problems.
Now that he has managed the Mantashe problem, the elephant in the room is how he delays appointing Paul Mashatile as his deputy in government.
George Orwell might have had a country such as ours in his novel 1984. The central character, Big Brother, represents the Oceania government that, like the ANC, turned the state into its carbon copy.
What we are watching under Ramaphosa is an Orwellian poverty of ideas and resolve. We will look back at his era's nothingness in a decade. His effusive proponents will rue all the hope and positive sentiment spent on him.
• Mkokeli is lead partner at public affairs consultancy Mkokeli Advisory
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