President defiant on cabinet reshuffles
MPs unable to reason with Zuma
PRESIDENT Jacob Zuma told MPs that he did not have to provide reasons for his cabinet reshuffles and that those looking for reasons were looking “for a needle in a prairie”. Answering questions in the National Council of Provinces, Zuma said none of his 11 cabinet reshuffles defied logic.
“There are no decisions that have defied logic – nothing of that nature,” he said.
“Throughout the world, generally reasons why heads of state change ministers, it is their decisions, (it’s) very rare that they will say what are the reasons, and how do you say their decisions defy logic? It’s not true.”
The president was responding to demands that he provide reasons for his reshuffling of ministers, including replacing the respected Pravin Gordhan with Malusi Gigaba as finance minister and replacing Blade Nzimande with Hlengiwe Mkhize in the higher education portfolio.
“It is not only because ministers are lazy. There are other reasons that lead to presidents taking decisions, therefore to try and find the reasons is really looking for a needle in a prairie,” he said.
Opposition MPs called Zuma’s decisions to shake up his cabinet irrational.
DA MP Leon Magwebu accused him of serving his own interests of “corruption, maladministration, and abuse of power”.
Zuma responded that Magwebu was peddling propaganda.
“His assumptions are his assumptions, not necessarily correct assumptions.”
Zuma’s reshuffles have angered the ANC’s alliance partners, most notably the SACP, of which Nzimande is the general secretary.
The SACP and third alliance partner Cosatu have called for Zuma to step down. Also, the SACP has threatened to go it alone in the 2019 elections.
Zuma will be replaced as party president at the ANC elective conference in December but will still remain state president. He can only be removed as state president if the party recalls him.
Zuma also said the legal fees incurred by the state in his challenging the reinstatement of 783 corruption, fraud and racketeering charges was not his problem and was the fault of the DA.
Zuma said he wouldn’t foot the legal bill in his personal capacity.
“I’m not going to pay from my pockets and change from what are the rules,” he said.
“If the DA, if it is so sympathetic, they will not be taking people to court all the time. You can’t have the cake and eat it. You just wasting our time really.” The DA had taken the matter to court, arguing that the 2009 decision by the former director of the National Prosecuting Authority, Mokotedi Mpshe, to withdraw the charges had been irrational.
“The DA goes to court on everything and therefore cause the money of the taxpayers to be paid in defence of those who are working in government. It is your responsibility, it is not my responsibility,” said Zuma.
“If you take someone to court, you must know that somebody must defend the case. If that somebody is working in government and the case is arising out of when the president was working, by law, government pays. It is not my problem.” – ANA DEPUTY President Cyril Ramaphosa said South Africa’s law enforcement agencies should waste no time in investigating mounting allegations of state capture at the country’s parastatals.
“The agencies need to pursue all these allegations with equal vigour… it is something the public as a whole is waiting for, for them to get on with this task,” he said while responding to questions from the opposition in the National Assembly.
“Firstly, the money stolen should be brought back and secondly, those responsible should be brought to book.”
He said the agencies that needed to act included the National Prosecuting Authority and the elite police unit, the Hawks.
Ramaphosa commended Parliament’s portfolio committee on public enterprises for its inquiry into Eskom, which has in recent weeks heard testimony that the power utility unlawfully paid hundreds of millions of rand to companies linked to the Gupta family. Witnesses have claimed that Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown was complicit in corruption, prompting her to denounce the probe as “a kangaroo court”.
Ramaphosa also told the National Assembly he was reading investigative journalist Jacques Pauw’s best-selling exposé of the Zuma administration
which the State Security Agency (SSA) has sought to ban.
Responding to a question from DA chief whip John Steenhuisen, Ramaphosa said it was too early for him to say whether he agreed with the notion that it should be banned because he had not read far enough yet.
“I’m reading the book as well and it is possible that the honourable leader of the opposition is way ahead because I think he uses it for bedtime reading… I have not had that luxury,” he said.
Ramaphosa said as a result he did not think he was in a position yet to say whether it should have been banned but as a general rule he believed “you should never really muzzle the media”.
Steenhuizen had asked whether Ramaphosa had agreed with the SSA’s bid to force Pauw to withdraw the book. It issued a cease and desist letter to the author on November 1 and threatened to bring criminal charges against him should he ignore it.
Pauw and his publishers have said they will not withdraw the book or change any aspect of it.
The book details a web of corruption around the president, whom Ramaphosa is campaigning to succeed as leader of the ANC when the party holds its elective conference next month. – ANA