HOW SLOTH CLAIMED RAMAPHOSA
It’s not just Eskom, the bloke at the top also has no energy
South Africa is no country for young people. According to Stats SA, people aged 15 to 24 and 25 to 34 recorded the highest unemployment rates of 59.6% and 40.5% respectively in the third quarter of 2022. Youth unemployment is expected to be 63.8% by the end of this quarter, according to Trading Economics.
This is no country for women, either. The World Population Review says “only 25% of South African women said they felt safe walking alone at night, the lowest of any country”. The Lancet Psychiatry Commission on intimate partner violence and mental health found last year that worldwide, 27% of women and girls aged 15 and older have experienced either physical or sexual intimate partner violence. In South Africa, the figure is between 33% and 50%.
Anywhere else, such statistics would force the president and the executive to throw the best brains and the most energetic politicians at the problem. On Monday night President Cyril
Ramaphosa appointed the 74year-old Nkosazana Dlamini
Zuma, possibly the most unenergetic and uninspiring politician in the world, to head the ministry for women, youth & people with disabilities.
It tells you a lot about
Ramaphosa’s priorities.
He is fiddling while Rome burns.
The long-awaited cabinet reshuffle was a study in lost opportunities, and shows just how Ramaphosa has allowed sloth and dysfunction to thrive in his administration. Take, for example, the fact that last year, Ramaphosa pulled in former Exxaro bigwig Sipho Nkosi to lead a team in his office to cut red tape across the government. I still wonder why this job, which obviously should be done by trade, industry & competition minister Ebrahim
Patel, is being done by a private sector volunteer. Either Ramaphosa should have fired Patel on Monday, or he should make him do his job. He did neither.
What happened on Monday? The truth is that it was not a cabinet reshuffle. It was a reshuffle of the presidency. Ramaphosa has over the years appointed a whole bunch of people to his office to paper over the laziness, incompetence and even corruption of some of his cabinet picks. Just energy transition? Pick Daniel Mminele. Red tape? Pick Nkosi.
So instead of cracking the whip and making public enterprises minister
Pravin Gordhan do his job (fix Eskom), he has appointed a minister of electricity (Kgosientsho Ramokgopa). As
I’ve said before, this poor fellow now has to contend with Gordhan and the loquacious
Gwede Mantashe
(energy minister), the Eskom board chair (reporting to Gordhan), and a CEO who hasn’t been appointed yet. How many cooks in this kitchen?
Ramokgopa doesn’t have a job yet either, as Ramaphosa says he is still to use section 97 of the constitution to transfer “certain powers and functions” from other entities to him. Given that the president announced this position a month ago and still has not done this, I am sceptical.
The wonderful thing about
Ramaphosa these days is that he has become predictable. I did not expect much from him on Monday, and he did not deliver much.
He said: “Understanding that just one year remains for the sixth administration, these changes are not about overhauling the national executive. The changes I am announcing now are intended to fill vacancies that occurred in the executive.”
This tells you everything you need to know about Ramaphosa and his cabinet’s grasp of the issues. We are sitting in the dark. Crime is rampant. Corruption flourishes. The economy is tanking. The currency is turning into the Zim dollar. Young people are jobless. Women are terrified in the streets and at home.
And the man says he is not overhauling his useless executive, just fiddling with it.
Bheki Cele, who has failed spectacularly at the police ministry, stays put. The rest of the cabinet stays in situ. Honestly, Ramaphosa is now gaslighting the nation.
What is power if it is not used? Ramaphosa supposedly has a mandate from the ANC. His opponents are cowering in the corner after their thrashing at the ANC conference in December.
Yet Ramaphosa’s actions over the past two months are those of a man who is without a mandate and without power. What a waste.