Alarm bells should be ringing if...

BY THE time this is published, President Cyril Ramaphosa may have announced his new Cabinet. It is, after all, a full six weeks since he trounced his rivals in a leadership vote, and time is of the essence.

The situation is so bad that his government is contemplating declaring another National State of Disaster (NSD) to deal, ostensibly, with the power crisis. Maybe also the unemployment crisis? The nogrowth crisis? The collapse of policing crisis?

While all this dire stuff is happening, the poor president is surrounded by ministers who live in La La Land. A sports, arts and culture minister who wants to spend a couple of dozen million to erect a 100m-tall flag to celebrate South African pride and attract tourism. And a tourism minister who wants to spend a billion on sponsoring the English football club Tottenham Hotspur.

But despite the clear need to make swingeing changes and all the feverish speculation about the likely composition of Cyril’s “reform team”, it’s pointless to get too excited. Despite most of Ramaphosa’s ministers being not fit for purpose, given the paucity of ANC talent, it’s less about who’s in the new line-up of gravy guzzlers than who’s out.

At the bare minimum, however, if the following doesn’t happen, alarm bells and lamentations are in order:

That Tourism Minister Lindiwe Sisulu, as well as Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma are sacked. Not “redeployed” but out on their ears.

Both have actively undermined Ramaphosa and are anti-constitutionalist populists aligned with the Radical Economic Transformation faction;

That Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe is transferred to another portfolio where he cannot continue his sabotaging of alternative energy options, except for those that his relatives and assorted ANC cronies have the possibility of a rake-off from. Ideally, Mantashe should, like Sisulu and Dlamini Zuma, be dropped completely, but since he is Ramaphosa’s political comfort blanket, that’s not going to happen;

That the Cabinet is slimmed down to fewer than 20 departments. At present, there are 28 ministers and 32 deputy ministers.

A real bonus would be the exits also of the police and national education ministers. Bheki Cele, who is not only flamboyantly incompetent, but displays many of the personality characteristics of a sociopathic despot, is dangerous in that crucial portfolio.

Then there is Minister of Higher Education, Science and Technology Blade Nzimande – in reality, despite his name, about as keen-edged as a rolled-up newspaper – whose 25 consecutive years of ministerial mediocrity are unblemished by even a single notable achievement.

Dlamini Zuma, it was initially assumed, was a certainty for being fired. In 2017 she was the RET’s candidate against Ramaphosa for the presidency, and was the only minister to vote for a parliamentary impeachment inquiry into Ramaphosa, following his involvement in the Phala Phala foreign funds scandal.

This week, however, there are now media murmurings to the contrary. In the light of the government being poised to declare an NSD to sort out the power supply problem once and for all – or at least for long enough to win the 2024 general election – Dlamini Zuma is allegedly considered by some in the ANC leadership to be indispensable.

The Disaster Management Act, by a cursed stroke of fate, falls under the authoritarian Dlamini Zuma’s portfolio.

Sisulu, too, is speculated to be a cooked goose. She has called the president a liar and, more offensively, the judges of the Constitutional Court bench “house niggers”.

This week Daily Maverick broke the story that Sisulu has been secretly spearheading a deal in which the government’s marketing arm, South African Tourism, will sponsor Tottenham Hotspur to the merry tune of almost a billion rand.

This amounts to about four times as much as SA Tourism’s entire annual budget for marketing, which was R249 million in 2021.

Sisulu has denied that she has any personal interest or benefits from the deal, in the same way that Mantashe has rejected imputations of impropriety as regards the Karpowerships deal.

They may be telling the truth – although given the pervasiveness of corruption in the ANC leadership, the balance of probabilities is against it – but it doesn’t much matter.

The majority of South Africans of all hues and political persuasions, including ANC voters, simply don’t believe them. According to a 2021 Afrobarometer survey, almost twothirds (64%) of those polled believe that corruption has got worse under the Ramaphosa administration.

This makes Ramaphosa’s Cabinet shuffle doubly difficult. Not only does he have to find able ministers of state, he also has to find ones that are honest.

Were he in his selection to hew to such exacting requirements, the new Cabinet would be able to conduct its meetings in the Presidency’s broom cupboard.