ANC must recall Zuma, and soon
Two ministers in open conflict; two important state institutions in a state of open warfare. Internal politics and rivalries are common and inevitable, but this is a government at war with itself, with the added, debilitating effect that officers of state (people in the civil service) are being blurred beyond distinction with officers of party (ministers).
The effects may not be immediately visible, but the damage could be huge. Senior civil servants have to look constantly over their shoulders, fearful of backing the wrong faction; their juniors increasingly lack direction. A career in government service has become a career in politics, where the criteria for advancement have nothing to do with competence and integrity.
The practice of cabinet government should not allow a minister, let alone a junior like David Des van Rooyen, to publicly attack another, let alone a senior and distinguished one like Pravin Gordhan. Yet Van Rooyen (wearing his military veteran cap) did this with impunity, taking sides in the dispute between Gordhan and the Hawks.
This is only possible with the tacit support of president Jacob Zuma — despite Zuma’s assurances that he backs his finance minister.
To be effective, the cabinet has to be united, even if it disagrees bitterly in private before reaching its decisions.
And for national treasury to say publicly that Eskom is lying, as happened this week in relation to Eskom coal contracts with the Gupta-owned Tegeta Resources, is just extraordinary. Such an accusation will have the effect of automatically and completely discrediting one of them when the truth comes out. The stakes are high, and desperate cards are being played on both sides.
It does not help the official Zuma narrative that both Van Rooyen and Eskom CEO Brian Molefe are seen as the favourites to replace Gordhan, should he be fired as finance minister. Zuma has publicly endorsed Van Rooyen as “the most qualified finance minister I have ever appointed”, while he is also rumoured to be keen to appoint Molefe to the position.
At least we can be grateful that the factional struggle in the ANC and the state is so extensive and obvious — and so clumsily handled — that we have a good idea what is going on. What we are seeing, and it is less obvious than the personal clashes, is the destruction of cabinet government and, therefore, of accountability.
The key cabinet principle is collective responsibility, which complements the understanding in a parliamentary democracy that policy must be acted on. Governments must do things, and the cabinet must account for what is done and not done.
The Zuma cabinet is clearly no longer capable of this. It is a case of every minister for him or herself, which leads inevitably to preoccupation with survival.
Perhaps this should not surprise us, as close on 30% of the ANC’s members of parliament are ministers or deputy ministers. The second Zuma administration is the biggest (and most expensive) in SA’s history, with 35 departmental portfolios and a deputy for every minister.
Contrast this with the practice in the US, where modern presidents since 1980 have typically appointed a cabinet of between 22 and 24 members — the same as Margaret Thatcher in the UK in the 1980s. Both economies are many times larger than SA’s.
The extravagance of the bloated cabinet is offensive. Its direct effect on the quality of national administration is not easy to discern — but is vital to understanding why this government is so inefficient and has seemed so often to be in a state of semiparalysis.
The more MPs there are in government office, the less easy it is for the others to hold them to account, which means implementation of policy is likely to drift. The factional warfare of recent months has made this state of affairs much worse.
Zuma now presides over policy incoherence, administrative confusion and crumbling morality, and he no longer derives personal authority from the office he holds. If the ANC cannot come to its senses and “recall” Zuma as it did Thabo Mbeki in 2007, it will stand accused of refusing to take responsibility for running the country — and of insisting on seeing it ruined.